Hoax Site #1
The first website I picked to evaluate was the Mankato (MN) Home Page. I picked this one because I went to Mankato, MN numerous times growing up to downhill ski at Mt. Kato. So, I thought it was humerous that Mankato has all cold connotations for me and the website was about how Mankato is a nice, balmy place year-round.
Credibility/Authority: can't really find; crazy disclaimer page that should give you an idea that this may not be a credible site
Accuracy: not accurate--can't verify this type of Minnesota weather
Reliability: there are ads on the page
Relevance: the information is so crazy sounding, that it doesn't seem like it would be very relevant
Date: says it's updated "the first Monday of every month"--that sounds sketchy
Sources Behind the Text: most of the links within the text that should probably go to external sources go to other pages within the same site
Scope and Purpose: the purpose of the page seems to be entertainment, not educational or informational
Hoax Site #2:
The second website I picked was The Taxonomy of Barney.
Credibility/Authority: from the Improbable Research group--this should give you a first hint
Accuracy: The information is based on the idea that Barney is actually a living creature (not just a person in a big purple suit). This obviously cannot be verified through other sources.
Reliability: the x-ray image included in the text is clearly a drawing
Relevance: the information in the site wouldn't be relevant to someone doing research in the area of dinosaurs or evolution (but it might be a fun article to read at the start of a unit as a humorus way to start the unit)
Date: It's dated 1995, which is pretty old for scientific journal articles (if you are trying to do research on anything current).
Sources Behind the Text: One link on the site takes you to Amazon for a book of collections of articles such as these. Reading the reviews, it shouldn't be hard to figure out this is an article written for entertainment.
Scope and Purpose: states that it is "research that makes people laugh and then think"
Two activities I can use in my classroom:
E-mail Netiquette: All students in our district received e-mail addresses this year through school (a Google service). Students were given directions in how to access this new account; however, they weren't given any guidelines about how to appropriately use e-mail. I'm assuming that most students already use e-mail (most of my students already had e-mail addresses, so this new one is simply one that isn't blocked at school during the school day). However, it would be nice to have students read over and talk about various e-mail netiquette issues. Then students would not only have an idea about what might be appropriate or not appropriate when sending e-mails to me as their high school teacher, but hopefully would be able to take some of that information with them as they leave high school and need to start e-mailing other people (potential employers, etc...)
Personal Information on the Web: Although the piece is a little old, the information and message is still very real: NBC Nightly News piece on Online Predators. We spend some time in class talking about posting personal information--students are required to create a blog as a part of a project during our ecology unit. So we talk about issues like your address name, using your full name, not posting a map to your house (since a map is part of the project), and other issues. I don't want to scare students, but I need them to know that there are real risks and that they need to be very careful about posting personal information.
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