Final Project (Day 3)

Thursday, January 22, was the first day where students used the Internet as part of the Educational Technology included in their Final Project.

Students were taught the most important clues to learn a website's validity. Most of the clues I actually took from the last-week's reading Forcier & Decay's The Computer as an Educational Tool. Students asked themselves questions of websites, such as "What was the purpose for making this site?"

We discussed earlier that in general, the purpose for .com sites was "to sell," whereas the purpose for .edu sites was "to teach." Students tried to find good websites that were not .com, but I also told them that several .com websites could still be viewed as valid.

Students then asked themselves the question, "Who wrote this website?" Their document requires them to write down the author or publisher, as well as an upload-date or copyright date of the website. In this manner, students should notice that websites without either (or both) of these can be considered invalid.