LINK:
1. What can the URL tell you?
This is a personal page that comes from an educational domain from the Michigan State University.
2. Scan the perimeter of the page.
The page is written by and developed by 3 students of an evolution subject at MSU as a part of their course work. It is dated at 2002. The authors have no real expertise and a resource list has been made available. However links within the body of text no longer work. There is no recent updating.
3. Indicators of quality information.
The links provided throughout the text do not work and the information has been obtained from several Journals and websites. Some of the resources that do have links work, but the reliability and validity of these look as though they also need to undergo examination.
4. What do others say?
After using alexa.com no results appeared and Wayback Machine showed no recent updates and also no links were detected. The Author has no information about them on the web and nothing is said about them.
5. Does it all add up?
After the completion of this evaluation I would not recommend it for use by students. It was developed as a component of a subject at university by several students. Given the dates and “dead” links the value of the page is significantly low. Pages of more recent development would be sought after as well as being from a reliable author.
I would definitely agree with you that this website is not extremely valid or reliable. The validity is undermined as the site has been created by students and can be seen to be a personal page; the students lack credentials on the subject matter. After reading through the content, there is some consistency in the information with other resources. This can be seen where the students have obtained the information from various journal articles etc. However, the compilation of the information is not extremely sufficient and thus I too would not consider this to be both a valid and reliable resource. It is extremely important that students at a high school level learn to assess the reliability and validity of the resource they access. On my practical, I found that when teachers allowed students to find their own information on the internet, most students accessed the first link that they found on Google and did not consider at all the validity and reliability of the information they collected. It is easy for students to simply copy and paste information from numerous websites. Therefore, as teachers we need to set an example for the students and ensure the resources we provide are both valid and reliable. This website would not be a suitable resource to allow students to use.
ReplyDeleteLaura