Website Valid! ... or not?

Today we're looking at different ways to find out if a website is valid or not. I think this is a very useful thing to know because as a teacher, I need to be able to tell my students if they can/cannot use certain sites. The website I devised to evaluate was a biography of George Washington. I would put the url here, but it won't let me.

The first evaluation site I used was WAVE, which can tell you if your website is accessible or not. All you have to do is type in the url and it will evaluate the site and tell you how many accessibility problems there are. The cool thing about my website was that WAVE could not come up with any accessibility errors. So, this would probably be a very good site for the children to use. The only thing I don't like about WAVE is that it's not foolproof. In order to make sure that your site is accessible, you have to check it out, even after WAVE has checked.

The next evaluation site I used was the Kathy Schrock guide. I used the elementary school level, since that is what I plan on teaching. It asks lots of questions, about the inteernet site, how you're hooked to the internet and what web browser you're using, then it gets into the details. The first part asks how it looks, talking about the pictures and spelling and author's name, among other things. Part two asks what you leaned from the page, asking if the title page told you what it's about, comparing the information you got to an encyclopedia, and asking if everything on the page (pictured and photographs included) helps you learn. I really like this web evaluation guide because it doesn't make the decision for you. It asks you questions that are necessary to know if you're going to try to decide if your website is valid or not, but it lets you make the decision. Based on this guide, I would have to say that the website I chose, the bibliography about George Washington, is valid.

From using these evaluations, I've learned that validity is more than how a page looks. It also includes accessibility to people with disabilities and to people from different places. Validity has to do with resources and details that can be verified from encyclopedias and other valid resources. Opinions are not a valid thing, the main thing to look at is good information.

I really like the idea of making sure that the websites used in my classroom are valid. Students can't always tell if something is good or not, but if I'm willing to take the time and effort, I can help them find resources that will help them do what they need. And the biggest thing I learned from this lesson is that I can decide if a website is valid or not.