Critical Web Evaluation Internet Workshop Reflection

The feedback i received from my group was all positive. I walked them through my handout/worksheet and explained my reasoning behind each step that I chose for student to take in their evaluation of the webpage. My group mates commented on the fact that I was able to make my web evaluation so relevant to my subject, biology. I think both of them struggled with this aspect (they are math teacher) so they were happy to see that I was able to do it. We also looked over my grading rubric, which I was a bit concerned about. I felt that the criteria was vague and perhaps not written in a language that my students could easily understand and interpret as they self asses. But my group mates assured me that these aspects of my rubrics were clear enough to them and that I was being too hard on myself.

After this experience, I am surprised to say that I think I will try to use this workshop in my future classroom. I am proud of my work, and I believe that through this workshop my students will learn a valuable lesson in information literacy as well as getting a great introduction to the controversy surrounding genetic engineering.

In our discussion of the quote, "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) we definitely agreed with the sentiments and we cited many of our conversation that we have been having in class. We talked about the importance of fact checking information found on the internet, and we discussed the importance of giving our students the proper tools and skills to carry out effective fact checking. We decided that if we give our students these skills then it acts like a mental checklist that they can complete and then be confident about the webpage and its information. In essence it takes the guessing out of their fact checking.