Re: Finding information on the Internet

[Richard L Bowman <rbowman@BRIDGEWATER.EDU>]

In my introductory astronomy course, I usually assign at least one report
on the content of a web site relating to astronomy. I have learned that it
works best when I require them to clear their selected site with me. Then
if the stie is not a "good" choice, I have the opportunity to interact with
the student on how to choose a reasonable site. There are so many primary
source sites on astronomy, and yet a significant percentage of the students
will come up with web pages on "magazine" like sites that summarize science
articles or, worse yet, science fiction type of sites or sites basically
being web presentation of student papers.

One site that I have found useful for guiding students in how to evaluate
effective web sites is the tutorial written by the UC-Berkeley Library.
  http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/TeachingLib/Guides/Internet/Evaluate.html

Recently Michael Ours, reference and information technology librarian at
Bridgewater, gave me the following sites for the same purpose. They also
appear to be very good.

  http://muse.widener.edu/Wolfgram-Memorial-Library/webevaluation/webeval.htm
  http://www.lib.vt.edu/research/evaluate/evalbiblio.html
  http://library.albany.edu/internet/evaluate.html
  http://lib.nmsu.edu/instruction/evalcrit.html

Richard
---------------------------------
Richard Bowman
Prof. of Physics / Dir. of Academic Computing
Bridgewater College, Bridgewater, VA  22812, USA
http://www.bridgewater.edu/~rbowman/