What is a "reliable" website?

As a future educator, I have to teach my students how to be safe & responsible. This applies in their school, home, community, & over the internet. One thing I have to educate my students about is the credibility of various resources that are on the internet. There are thousands upon thousands of websites that students can stumble upon; how are students supposed to know what websites are good & what websites are bad? There will be a few pointers that I will give my students when they are evaluating websites on the internet…

1.  Make sure to read over ALL the information on a site.

                Many internet sites can be very misleading. Some information may sound very compelling & truthful, but if you continue on the site further things may sound wrong. For example, the website titled “All About Explores” looks like a good website at first glance, but if you continue reading you soon find out that a lot of the information they supply is false. This is a direct quote from the website: “Because we wanted to make a point about finding useless information even in a site which looked at first to be fairly well put together, all of the Explorer biographies here are fictional. While many of the facts are true or based on truth, many inaccuracies, lies, and even downright absurdity are mixed in indiscriminately. As such, it is important that you do not use this site as a source of reference for your own research!”

2. A website of opinions should not be considered accountable.

                If a student is doing a persuasive article & wants supporting opinions, a completely feeling based website may be helpful, but in most cases if a website is base off of someone’s opinions it is not a good website. For example, the website “Martin Luther King Jr.-A True Historical Examination” is a website created with someone’s personal opinions. This website was basically designed to trash talk Martin Luther King Jr. It is important to stress to students to compare various websites to see if they have reliable information.

3. Check when the website was last published.

                If a website has not been updated within the last few months it is NOT a reliable website. Information in our world is being updated daily & these websites should be too! If a website is outdated that means many of its links will be too. Students should explore web pages & click on various things. If a link does not work or leads a student to an expired page it shows that the information is probably expired too.