What is wrong with this sentence? “Christopher Columbus was born in 1951 in Sydney, Australia”. Young students are naive to believe that everything they read online is true. However, many students learned at an early age that Christopher sailed the ocean blue in 1492-making the above statement incorrect. If you look further on this website you can see that the website was designed specifically to show students that not every website is filled with correct information. If I was teaching a class about the validity of information on the web, I would use the example of a wiki to show how many different people could post information even if it was incorrect. You could even makes something up on the spot and show the students how easy it is to post something on the web.
You could also use the website with the rain forest octopi to illustrate your point further. If someone came up to you while you were eating lunch telling you that there were these octopuses that lived on pine trees and are endangered because Sasquatch eats them, would you believe them? Then why would you believe this information if it was posted online?
Sometimes the information isn’t always clear if it is true or not. In this case there are some helpful hints to determine the validity. Spelling mistakes is one red flag that the information online is incorrect. If the website didn’t take the time to make sure their spelling is correct they probably didn’t take the time to make sure their information is correct. Websites who don’t post the creators name and contact information are also a little “fishy”.
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