Level: Grades 7 to 10

Overview

This lesson and all associated documents (handouts, overheads, backgrounders) is available in an easy-print, pdf kit version.   To open the lesson kit for printing, click here.   To print only this page, use the "printable version" link at the top of the page.

In this lesson students apply the "5W's of Cyberspace" to sources of information they find online. Assuming the role of a student researching a science project, students must authenticate the information in an online article about the artificial sweetener, Aspartame.

Learning Outcomes

Students will:

• understand the importance of authenticating online resources
• recognize the signs of bias and omission in information
• use a template to authenticate Web sources based on site authorship or ownership, content and currency
• use meta-information search techniques to validate online information
• understand the structure of uniform resource locators (URL's) and how URLs can be used to determine authorship and credibility

Preparation and Materials

• students will need access to the Internet in order to complete their assignments

Photocopy:

• teaching backgrounder Deconstructing Web Pages
• student handouts The Five W's of Cyberspace and Deconstructing Web Pages Work Sheet (PDF)

Procedure

Assign note-takers to tally student responses on the board. Ask students the following questions:

• How many of you use the Internet for research and homework?
• How would you rank the Internet as a homework resource, compared to the school library, and public library? (Point for comparison: In MNet's Young Canadians In A Wired World (YCWW) survey, 44% of students turned to the Internet first as a source for homework, compared to 19% who would choose a public library and 16% who would choose a school library.)
• What are the advantages of the Internet over more traditional resources?
• What are the disadvantages?
• What is the difference between publishing material on the Internet, and publishing material in books? (Traditional publishing incorporates a series of "gatekeepers" such as editors, proofreaders and fact checkers. On the Internet, authors can bypass these gatekeepers. As long as you have the technical know-how to create a Web page, you can publish your thoughts online.)
• How much of the information you find on the Internet do you think is true and can be trusted - all of it; most of it; some of it; none of it. (Point for comparison: In the YCWW survey, 3% of students believed that all the information was true, 37% believed most to be true, 48% believed some to be true, and 6% believed none of it to be true.)
• Do you ever do anything to confirm that the information you have found online is true and can be trusted?
• For those of you who answered "yes," what do you do to check that the information you find on the Internet is reliable? (Point for comparison: In the YCWW survey, the most common responses were: check the author or source, 51%; judge for myself, 50%; ask a teacher, 47%; look the information up in a book or magazine, 39%; or check with a friend, 38%.)

It's important that all of us - adults and young people - to learn how to tell whether online information is accurate and trustworthy.

Distribute the student handout The Five W's of Cyberspace and review the main points with students.

Activity

• Individually or in pairs, have students complete the Deconstructing Web Pages Work Sheet (PDF).
• Once students have been graded and returned, take up the answers as a class. (The teaching backgrounder Deconstructing Web Pages contains the answers to this assignment.

Evaluation

• Completed work sheets