If your students are among the millions discovering the excitement of online learning, this week's sites are among the best on the Web for teaching Web literacy. Kathy Schrock developed these original evaluation tools for elementary, middle, and high school students to assess the quality of Web sites.
Students learn to examine usability, bias, applicability, authenticity, and authorship.
For each group, the site offers the stages of sophistication children pass through in working online, educational resources, commercial strategies, and issues for specific age groups. Teachers can also examine the recommended critical-thinking skills to help address these issues in the classroom. Librarian Hope Tillman brings together an overview of how to be a smart consumer of Internet information by talking to the educators who must model best practices for their students. The site includes a survey of currently available evaluation tools, search engines, directories, and guides available on the Internet. The key indicators of quality checklist may be especially helpful in assessing the quality of online resources.