'Select any Biology website relevant to a column 2 content and evaluate it for reliability and validity.'
Well once again I find myself writing down my thoughts and opinions about something rather interesting. This thought actually helped me think about a focus point on this weeks blog questions. How is what i am writing any bit reliable or valid for that of fact. Who am I to say as a pass/credit student have any credibility what so ever?
So upon researching a rather controversial dot point within 8.4;
describe some of the palaeontological and geological evidence that suggests when life originated on Earth.
I found it too tempting to use a religious webpage to make any form of comment. Therefore i stumbled upon this page (example of a bad resource).
http://www.ladeenyon.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=172&t=31927
Firstly, not only is this source in a different language originally (Arabic), therefore it must be questioned- is this being translated correctly? Another key point to question its reliability was in refernce to its actual URL. When searching for reliable/ credible sources we should always look to journal articles, .org, .gov, .edu type websites. These have been produced for education and information purposes. Finally their sentence structure and grammar is poor. This could potentially be due to the automatic translation. It also gives us information in a poorly formatted way. This confuses students and could take several items out of context. This is how misconceptions are made and simply confused students with poorly written content. Another key issue is that there are practically no references used within their writing. This usually means it has come from their understanding or their guess. Always use cited and peer reviewed work. On the note of validity it is questioned whether or not their work has any purpose to the readers. It is simply written in the form of a blog almost. Therefore the question of 'who the intended audience is, must be asked.
These few comments are essential for students to understand before they can master the use of reliable and valid sources
excellent response Daniel, it is very important to educate students on collecting reliable and valid resources in their studies especially in Science!
ReplyDeleteEducational websites with gov, edu and so on are a great source, however journal articles are more difficult for students to use as they contain high levels of scientific jargon that is difficult to comprehend
Daniel, Daniel, Daniel,
ReplyDeleteI am learning from your blog.
You addressed very good points, esp about the audience. I also look for the .gov, .edu etc when I research. And often we find information that is quite incorrect on the net, and wonder: Who wrote this? Who approved this? and then we wonder where misconceptions arise from.
Thanks for a great blog.