Website Detectives

Website Detectives
Posted on 11/30/2015
Web DetectiveAs part of the media literacy and digital citizenship curriculum, 5th graders at King Open are learning ways to determine a website’s trustworthiness, accuracy, and bias. They discovered that anyone can publish anything on the Internet when Ms. Rosenberg directed them to take notes from a hoax website about explorers. Students began to catch on when they read that Christopher Columbus was born in Australia in 1951, and that cosmetics company, Revlon, hired Juan Ponce Leon to find the fountain of youth. When students finally got over feeling duped, they really understood that not everything online can be trusted.

Students learned to ask specific questions to determine if a website is credible: who is the author and what is the contact info? When was the site last updated? What is the domain? Are there advertisements? Does the author cite sources? And many more investigative questions! Students will apply this critical mindset as they embark on Social Studies research, as well as the media production unit next term.
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