Online Research Tools and Resources

List some similarities and differences between these three articles.
"Vacanti mouse"   
"Mouse with human ear"
"Artificial liver 'could be grown'"

(Venn Diagram made using Lucidchart)

Which site do you believe to most credible?  Why?  What would you do next to determine which is accurate?

By the amount and type of information presented, I would have to say the ABC Science article, "Mouse with human ear" is the most credible. First, the url suggests reliability with the suffix of the site address being ".net" versus ".com." In addition, the author, Dr. Karl S. Kruszelnicki has an extensive repertoire stemming from his 32-year media career. In contrast, the other articles are not specific in identifying their writers. The article from ABC Science also addresses the false interpretations of other media sources, including the misconceptions that the ear grown on the mouse was both of human origin and a product of genetic engineering. The progression of research presented in Dr. Karl's article also shows in-depth research and excellent text organization that thoroughly discusses the subject.

The next step in determining the accuracy of the articles would be to find additional articles that could either confirm or dispute the information presented in each of the articles represented here. For example, in the Wikipedia article "Vacanti mouse," by clicking on the reference article, "Transplantation of chondrocytes utilizing a polymer-cell construct to produce tissue-engineered cartilage in the shape of a human ear," additional research from the scholarly article (considered to be reliable) would confirm the information in both the Wikipedia and ABC Science articles.

Based on your own research and experience, discuss what you have learned in this activity about credible information and how you might teach your students to evaluate websites and other online resources.

One thing that I have learned in this class and will remember always is this: Teachers are no longer responsible to teach content (students can Google practically anything). Rather, teachers need to teach students how to sift through the atrocious amount of information on the internet in order to responsibly choose the most reliable, trustworthy information out there. According to Angela Bunyi in the article, "Identifying Reliable Sources and Citing Them," the important task of teaching students how to find reliable sources and trustworthy information should start when students are first introduced to the internet, as early as first grade.

One place to start is creating a checklist for assessing the reliability of an internet source based on certain criteria, such as presented in the article, "Criteria For Evaluating Web Sites." Students should have to go through the process of verifying information on each website they visit prior to using information from that source. Richard Byrne's article, "9 Resources for Website Evaluation Lessons," contains links to a wealth of information for both assessing internet source credibility as well as lesson plans to teach this skill to students of all ages. This is an excellent source to start to gather ideas for preparing students to become more savvy, well-informed users of technology. As I am a middle school language arts teacher myself, I will definitely be creating a checklist for students to use in every research project and essay they will create this year.

**After further research and assistance from a fellow classmate (thanks Noel!), I wanted to amend my statement about the reliability of ".net" sites. Pages using the ".net" suffix is really a "catch-all" site that needs to be thoroughly investigated for reliability.