Validating Internet Information

How Do I Know Stuff on the Internet is True?
or
How to Evaluate and Validate Information from the Internet

I. What is the purpose of Web Site?
Why did they put the information on the Internet? What is the web site trying to do? Why was it created? Does it:

• Sell things like services and products?
• Try to entertain you?
• Just present information or numbers?
• Try to advocate ideas (to convince you, manipulate your mind or make you believe in a certain point of view)?
• Have more than one purpose, such as entertaining you while trying to sell you things or convince you to believe in something?

II. Who wrote the Web Site?
Who is the author? Is it a group, an organization, an individual? Did someone write the web site but another group paid for it? Does the web site even tell who wrote it?

Find out about the author's background using a search engine such as the one from the Illinois Math and Science Academy at http://toolkit.imsa.edu/locate or Google at http://www.google.com
(don't forget to use search techniques from http://www.coollessons.org/search.html) What information can you find from the search about the author or group who put up the web site?

• Is the person who wrote the web page an expert or an authority?
• Has the person been to school to learn about the topic of the web page?
• Do other experts on the subject agree that the author of the web page is an expert?
• What credentials does the author have?
• How do other people categorize the author or group?
• What is said about them?
• Is there anything controversial about them? If so, what is the controversy?

III. How can the web location or address to find out about the web site? (The location or address is the thing that begins with http://www. The location or address is also called the URL.

A. Some of the clues you will find at the end of an URL are:

URL	STANDS FOR	URL	STANDS FOR
.org	non-profit organization	.state.us	state or local government
.gov	government (state, federal, local)	.edu	educational (school or college)
.museum	museum	.biz	business
.info	informational	.com	commercial
.coop	business cooperative	.pro	professional
.aero	aviation	.net	personal page from a private net provider
/users	personal page from a private net provider	/members	personal page from a private net provider
~name	personal page from a private net provider	.name	an individual's web address

(~ is pronounced “tilde”) (Warning: some non-profit groups are not harmless.)

B. Use the URL to find out information about the site by going backwards to each file.
For example if copy and paste the following URL
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2/planet_hop.html
into the address or location of your web browser, you will see that it is a web site to find your age and weight on different planets.

If you go backwards in the URL and remove the last file,
/planet_hop.html

now
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/solar_system_level2

should be in the address or location. The web page is now about information about the solar system.

If you continue to go backwards in the URL and remove the next file,
/solar_system_level2

now
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild
should be in the address or location. The web page is now called "Star Child" and it is "A Learning Center for Young Astronomers".

If you continue to go backwards in the URL and remove the next file,
/StarChild

now
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs
should be in the address or location. The web page is now called "High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive Research Center" and as you see from the bottom of that web page, it is
page of NASA, the space organization in a governmental (.gov) web site.

So, in this web site the government through NASA is giving
your information about the solar system.

IV. Find out who is linking to (using) the web page.

Go to the AltaVista search engine at http://www.altavista.com, type
link:http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov
without a space after the colon, and then click the Search button.

• How many pages were returned?
• What kind of sites link to the starchild site?
• Are these sites controversial? Do these sites worry you in any way? Why?
• Are these sites trying to convince you of something? What is it?

V. Does the information you get from other web pages agree with the information on the web page you are wondering about?
• Are their major disagreements?
• If there are disagreements, what do most web pages say.
• Does the information agree with other information you can get from books such as encyclopedia in the library, or from recognized good magazines.

Teachers: Click here for a graphical organizer to help your students take notes from this page.