Critical Information Literacy Project

Create an assignment for your students in which they critically analyze an issue presented on the Internet. This can be based around one Web site that takes a particular stand on an issue, or it can be based on several Web sites that take different stands on a single issue. You might, for example, explore the stand taken by a Web site critical of technology in education (note that you may pick a site that has nothing to do with education or technology), or you might, for example, look for information about the current controversy around an alleged link between childhood vaccines and autism.

Be sure that the assignment insists that your students look at a variety of resources about the chosen issue (both offline and online), and be sure that you have some guidelines for critically analyzing web sites. When analyzing a given site, students should not stop at the site itself but should look at links from and to that site and other sites that discuss that site, organization, or issue. Be sure students discuss the site from a variety of perspectives, such as: is it emotionally effective, is the information backed up by facts, is the information backed up by sound research.While you may have your students use checklists and/or rubrics for evaluating sites, be sure that they go beyond a simple formulaic analysis and think deeply about where the site fits into the larger picture of the information being studied. To test yourself, think about what your students will learn from this exercise and if they will be able to apply it to some of the questionable sites we have viewed in class.

As part of your project, you will look at several Web sites. Include a brief discussion (not part of the assignment for your students) about why you chose the particular sites you included in the assignment.

Create a Web page for the assignment.

Minimum Grading Criteria

• You should create an organized lesson plan that you can use with students.
• You should create a lesson that will engage your students and begin to teach them the skills needed to critically analyze Web sites.
• You should include information about critically analyzing Web sites, such as rubrics or checklists.
• You should list various sources about the Web sites (what do others say about the sites you picked?).
• You should include a brief discussion about why you chose the particular sites you included in the assignment.
• All URLs that you list should be accurate.
• You should create this lesson in the form of a Web page (even if you would hand it out to students on paper) that includes correct HTML tags (although it is not required that you use HTML to create the page)
• All your work should be professionally presented, including correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation.

If the minimum grading criteria are met, you will receive a B for this assignment. The grade of A is reserved for outstanding work that goes beyond the minimum criteria. See the rubric for more details about grading criteria.

What To Hand In

• A copy of your lesson plan/web page
• A copy of your discussion of why you chose the sites you chose
• (Optional) Paragraph describing how you have exceeded the minimum grading criteria.
• Note that the best way to hand in work is by putting it on the Web and emailing the URL to the instructor. If it is not submitted that way, all work should be submitted electronically via the Blackboard Digital Dropbox; you should put ALL files that are part of the assignment in a single folder and compress it in Zip format to save the files as a single archive.

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This page was created by Dr. David M. Marcovitz.

Last Updated: September 12, 2008