8 Tips to Help Students Evaluate Websites
When students learn the tools for assessing a website’s authenticity, they gain valuable critical thinking and media literacy skills.
“Just about anyone can produce a professional-looking website,” says educator Amie Weinberg. So how do students know if a website is accurate and trustworthy? “It’s important to separate the way the site looks from the actual content.” Empower students to investigate a site’s accuracy and authenticity with steps like checking the domain name’s URL, looking for links to and from other reputable sites, or researching a web author’s credentials.
For even more of her terrific tips, check out Weinberg’s article “Teaching Students to Evaluate Websites” and her companion piece, “Helping Students Find the Truth in Social Media.”
Love this topic? See Youki Terada’s article on teaching students to fact-check online information, “What Fact-Checkers Know About Media Literacy—and Students Should, Too.”