Determining whether a website is credible or not is hard for all people, especially adolescents, who believe everything posted online is credible. I would first show my students that anybody can create their own website and put any information in them whether the information is correct or not. I would then pull up a non-credible website and state the obvious while looking at visual clues. If a page seems unprofessional, almost like a child's school project where there are smelling and grammar errors, the website is most likely not credible. The government or a credible source would hire a person whose job it would be to create the website and make it look professional, free of any errors.
I would then teach my students that when typing in a website; make sure that you are spelling the website correctly. Scammers take commonly misspelled companies or website names and make their website look identical to that of the actual website making people believe that they are on a legitimate website page when in actuality they are not. I would also tell my students to look for websites who are asking for personal information because chances are it is a website where scammers are looking to scam you because a credible website would not ask for personal information over the internet.
Also, check for the creator of the websites name, a postal address, e-mail address, and telephone number included in the website when looking at a company’s website. Another strategy to make sure of a websites credibility when searching for a website for a school research paper or project, go to your own school's library webpage, or even your city's public library and use a data base listen on their website such as BadgerLink, or EBSCOhost where they provide a number of different credible sources.
These are a few steps a teacher could take in providing their students with the proper information needed to make sure they are looking at a credible website in which all the information on the page is trustworthy.
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