Webpage Validity Assignment

Is it a hoax, a personal opinion, or intellectual research?

When using the Internet for research, you must know what kind of information you need.  Usually, you only want to use sites that are valid and demonstrate evidence of intellectual research.  Therefore, you must be able to distinguish the facts from the fallacies.

When evaluating sites, it is necessary to analyze their content for accuracy, authority, objectivity, currency, and coverage.  The evaluation guides linked from the educational links page will provide additional information on each criterion.

Assignment:

1) Visit the links below and choose three to evaluate:

·        “New Invention Allows Humans to Live Forever” http://www.alexchiu.com/eternallife/index.html

·        California’s Velcro Crop Under Challenge http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html

·        Visit Exciting Fredericton (requires Bess override)     http://descy.50megs.com/descy/webcred/webcred/Fredericton.html

What do you think of this city’s mayor?

·        MEDLINE Plus
http://www.medlineplus.gov/

·        Clones R US
http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Network/9000/

·        Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
http://www.cdc.gov

2) You will need to turn in a sheet of paper with the following information. Your name and the sites you visited. For each site, you will identify the “kind” of site it represents (personal opinion, bogus site, hoax, or intellectual research).

3) After identifying the kind of site it is, you will determine its validity. Tell why it is or is not a valid site.  Refer to the Evaluation Guides at the bottom of the educational links page to help you provide support for your explanation. 

***For example, you may decide it is a personal opinion site, and it is not valid because there are many broken links, and there is no author or date of update.