The Activity:
- You cannot always believe what you see! Explain to students that when searching the internet, they must constantly question the validity of anything they find. Although a website's name or appearance may seem official, it does not mean that it is. Have a discussion explaining how easy it is for anyone to post anything on the internet.
- Have student's visit the site http://home.inreach.com/kumbach/velcro.html
- Ask the students to answer the following 3 questions
- What does the graph tell us about the diminish of California's Velcro Crop?
- Who is the author of this website? What do you know about him?
- Where was this data collected from? Are there any referrals to other sources/links that were cited?
Purpose/Goal:
The purpose of this activity is to teach student's how to evaluate the validity of website's themselves by answering questions about a particular website. This activity will show student's that there are several ways to further investigate a website and the information that is found on it. This activity should be carried out by having the student's first work individually and then later share their findings in a group discussion.
1. The graph shows the decline of the California Velcro Crops starting in year 1985 to the year 1992, due to the issues of dry and windy conditions in the fields, invasions of disease, and drought.
ReplyDelete2. The author of this website is Ken Umbach. What I found out about Ken Umbach is that he is currently a self-employed researcher, writer, editor, and consultant who lives in Citrus Heights, California. He received his BA in Government from the University of Redlands in 1969 and then moved to acquire his PH.D. in Government from Claremont Graduate School in 1974. He is also the author of "The Pursuit of Publishing: An Unvarnished Guide For The Perplexed", which was published March 2011.
3.It is unclear where this data is collected from, also the provision of any referrals or links were not cited.