Website Evaluation for grade 5

Five Guidelines
Once youve entered your keywords, and
related terms into a search engine you
must evaluate the hits that are returned.
When examining a website make sure you
look for:
1. accuracy
2. author
3. purpose
4. currency
5. usefulness

Website Accuracy
Does this information make sense?
Check the details against another source like an
encyclopedia or a different website
Are there links to other trustworthy websites that
has more information on your topic?
http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/ma
mmals/mountain-gorilla/
http://www.gorillas-world.com/facts-aboutgorillas.html

Authorship
Who is the author? Is he/she an
expert?
Who is the publisher? Have you heard
of them before?
http://traveltips.usatoday.com/timewhale-watching-massachusetts16460.html

Purpose
You will need to know the purpose of the website
in determining if it contains reliable information.
Reason to create a website are:
To inform
To entertain
To sell
To persuade
You can gather a lot of information about the purpose of
the website by looking at the URL.

Purpose

Look at the URL, what does it tell you?

http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids/
http://www.harvard.edu/
http://www.greenpeace.org
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/

Currency
Use the most up-to-date information
- Current events
- Health and Medicine
- Technology
Check to see when the site was last updated,
or find the publication date. Remember
information changes over time.
http://www.timeforkids.com/news

Usefulness
Make sure the website is organized and easy
to navigate.
Do all the hyper-links work?
Are there images to look at?
Most importantly can you understand the
information, if you cant read and understand
it, the site will be of no use to you.