Critical Evaluation of a Website using a Screencast

In my class on Information Literacy and Online Inquiry, we were assigned to evaluate a website on its validity and reliability. I chose the website on the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus. Using Jing to create a screencast, I used the "think aloud" process to walk my students through the process of critical analysis of the site. I had viewed a screencast presentation before and this exercise gave me the opportunity to create a project, that in the future, I will be able to implement in my classroom. As I went through the steps in making this screencast, I realized that I needed to create a script so that I was sure to focus on the important aspects of the website that I wanted to show to my students.

In "thinking aloud" while creating this screen cast, I didn't realize the many thought processes that went on in evaluating a website. the author of Web Literacy for Educators, Alan November (2008), explained the thought scaffolding process using the acronym REAL to evaluate the validity of a website. The first step of the acronym is to Read the URL. The URL address provides clues about a site, its creator and its information. The second step in the process is to Examine the Content of the site. Carefully evaluating the information and cross checking with other sites helps the reader to judge the quality of the website. The next step is to Ask About the Author. By thoroughly examining the site (looking in the fine type), one can often find out who authored the site. However, sometimes the author's name is not listed. November (2008) suggested using the website www.easywhois.com which "collects information from the Internet to track who owns and is responsible for a domain name". By following these steps of evaluation, a reader can carefully determine the validity and reliability of a website.

November, A. (2008) Web Literacy for Educators.Thousand Oaks, CA, USA: Corwin Press.


This is the link to my screen cast for the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.

http://tree_octopus_jing

Screencast for class

My assignment for my Walden class was to create a screencast describing my thought process to students about how to critically analyze a website on its validity. I chose the website Save the Pacific Northwest Tree Octopus.