Evaluating Information Web Sites & Citing Sources: Topic 9

"While there’s a wonderful world of websites out there for you to use both to create – as you have been doing during this tutorial – and to get information. Unfortunately, though, since anyone can publish a website, not all sites are good quality. They may have incorrect or biased information. So, you need to be careful about what sites you select when you are looking for information" (Teen Learning 2.0).

Before you go any further, let's see what you know already about evaluating information sources.  Please go take the TRAILS ten question test on evaluating information sources.  Your sign in code is in the Library Assistant's binder. Do this before lab day so that you can review your test results then.

After the test I hope you have some questions about how you should be reviewing web sites.  To learn to better evaluate please watch and listen to (you will need ear plugs or to watch at the tutorial created by Widener University Reference Library, How to Evaluate Information on the Web.

"When you added images to your blog, you gave credit by creating a link back to the page where you found the image. When you write research reports, you will need to create 'Works Cited' list and write a complete citation for each book, website, database, image, and other source you use" (Teen Learning 2.0).  PUSD subscribes to an excellent citation maker, Noodletools that goes beyond citation making and helps with taking notes and formatting bibliographies/works cited as well.  



1.  Sign up for or login to your account in Noodletools. For help signing up see How to Sign Up for Noodletools.  Then for more help see the Noodletools User Guide.  

2.  Create a project, call it Sample Works Cited, and share it with Ms. Powell (share under Powell Library TAs).  

3.   Create three citations: 

• one for the book you are reading for your book trailer, 
• one for an article from a subscription database about the book, such as a book review (try EBSCO Teacher Resources and search for your book's title or author),
• one for a web page (evaluated and that you could use for a school research paper having to do with the author or the book). 

 4.  Print/Export the completed citations; choose the 'Preview as a webpage (HTML)' option and then copy and past this page into your Topic 9 blog post. We should all be able to see your three citations.

5. On lab day, review your TRAILS test results.  In your Topic 9 blog post, please copy and past the questions you missed, your initial answer and then explain what the correct answer should be and why.  If you scored 100% on the TRAILS test please design an additional evaluation question and answer that could be added to the test. Post that question and answer in your blog as your Topic 9 post.