Information Literacy: Critically Evaluating the Web

1. What feedback on your Internet Workshop did you receive from your two group members online?
Overall, my group liked the Internet Workshop that I designed, especially what I was using as a hook. The main critique that they had was that I should either elaborate on or include a guide for students to follow in answering the first two questions on my handout on evaluating a website. It was suggested that I could either incorporate it right on the handout, make a separate handout with the an explanation of domains on it, and/or give a more in depth description within the lesson part of the class.

The other thing that they felt I could do is to incorporate a way of assessing the group work. This is not something that I had thought about until recently because of our latest Methods and Evaluations class where we focused on how to use group work effectively and how to evaluate the individual’s performance as well as the groups. Since this class, this is something that I will definitely want to explore and incorporate in a revised version of this lesson.

When I was going over the lesson that I had created with the group and seeing it fresh after not having looked at it in a few days, I feel that I could also polish it up a bit. I see areas where I can word parts better and include better and fuller explanations of my intentions.

2. Will you use the Internet Workshop, or use a revised version of the Internet Workshop in your future classroom? Please explain.
I can definitely see the value of incorporating this (or another version of this) Internet Workshop in my future classroom. These are skills that students definitely should possess. However, I do not know for certain whether or not I will include this in my future classroom because I do not what kind of constraints that I will be under for getting specific material covered. I can say that this is definitely something that I will keep in mind and try to incorporate one way or another.

3. Briefly summarize your group's discussion of the statement, "Students will become victims of the expansive dark side of the Internet unless we teach the critical thinking necessary to make meaning out of the overwhelming and potentially manipulative amount of information that is now available and growing every day" (November, 2010, p.27).
As a group, we felt this to be a very accurate statement. We said that young students can be quite impressionable and should be equipped with the skills to be able to decipher what is and is not a credible source of information. Without these skills, they can be lead to believe some pretty fantastical claims since the internet is a forum where people can post ideas and make claims about anything they want.