Credibility and accuracy: There is no visible authorship. The email address linked is "shankhead@gmail.com", not quite a professional address. A check of the author revealed no credentials" and no "About us" or "FAQ" is offered. The truncated URL leads to a homepage that also links "Fishkill2004" about a fishing trip. The page "Facts about the Civil War" contained many errors. Among them that the U.S. fought the Swiss, Union states included Oregon, Lincoln flew to Camp David--I need not go on! A link check turned up the site linked on numerous school websites about evaluation of web sources--a dead giveaway.
http://zapatopi.net/bsa/
Credibility and accuracy:
. This site did have an FAQ and link to author info, one Lyle Zapato whose motto is Ex demento scientia. In addition, the site includes other bizarrare "facts" about Zapato including his religion, which he lists as "KELvinism"! There was a guestbook that had a number of entries, among them some cursing. The site offered aluminum reflector beanies for sale .... need I say more?
2. Before my students began their first PBL assessment, I created a mini-lesson about Fair Use, Public Domain, and Copyright, in addition to some info about design and color. I included some print resources from the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a great video called "A Fair(y) Use Tale". The Electronic Frontier Foundation has a whole unit for teachers to use. I don't think I'm going to stop kids from cutting and pasting images willy-nilly, but I hope to at least raise awareness. Tomorrow, we talk about Creative Commons (since they need a number of images for their assessment) and some of the resources on the copyright friendly wikispaces (Thanks, 21 Things!) Because I've become an absolute Jing junkie (nice alliteration!) I've included a screenshot of my "Effective Presentations" book:
No comments:
Post a Comment