Goals and Objectives:
Students will heighten their critical navigation skills and learn methods for verifying the validity of a website by using information literacy skills to navigate and explore www.allaboutexplorers.com and use valid search engines to confirm their findings.
Activity Context and Uses:
This activity is created to show young students that not every site on the internet is reliable or factual, no matter how well-maintained or official it may look. This activity is particularly pertinent to younger students doing research on explorers and history, as the site portrays some outlandish information as if it were real and uses false credentials to appear trustworthy to unsuspecting students. Teachers can use this activity to encourage critical thinking and navigation skills, comparison of information on various reference sites, and validation of facts before relying on a certain website.
Procedure:
1. Who are the authors of this website? Do their credentials describe trustworthy experts? Use www.google.com or www.ajforkids.com to search more about their backgrounds and see if your findings match what you find on the website.
2. Read about explorer Jacques Cartier on the website. Compare the explorer's birthplace and birthdate to three other sites that you find on an internet search engine. What do your finding tell you about the facts on allaboutexplorers.com?
3.Use the website to learn about Ferdinand Magellan. What is the difference between how allaboutexplorers.com presents Magellan's great Ocean discovery and the information on http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/m/magellan.shtml ? Find one other search engine resource with this information and compare your findings to the facts on allaboutexplorers.com
1. I searched all of the listen authors, Gerald Aungst, Lauren Zucker, Dr. Eton Kroe, and Lochten deBrigg, and none of the listed names matched up with information on the Internet. The authors credentials do not seem realistic or trustworthy.
ReplyDelete2. The website says Jacques Cartier was born in 1492 in France. Other sites say that he was born in 1941 in St. Malo, France. This shows that the facts are not all correct.
3. The website says that Ferdinand Magellan's discovered the route between the Panama Canal and in the process discovered the Pacific Ocean, which he named after his daughter. The enchanted learning website said he led the first expedition around the earth and named the Pacific Ocean. He went to India and the Far East many times through Africa's Cape of Good Hope. Another search I found said nothing about naming his daughter after the Pacific Ocean or anything about the Panama Canal. It had similar information to the enchanted learning site, but not the allaboutexplorers.com
By Ciara Copell
ReplyDelete1. I read through the authors listed on the allaboutexplorers.com website and there are some asinine claims about each of them, including asserting that Gerald Aungst visited 6 of the 7 major continents and a few minor ones, Lauren Zucker creates origami power tools in her time off from being a world famous botanist and voice-over actor, and that Lochten DeBrigg is a Donate Glazer Laureate. As I suspected, after a google search of these names, nothing even remotely similar came up. This tells me that the authors of this site are most likely fabricated and are definitely unreliable.
2. The website allaboutexplorers.com said that Jacques Cartier was born in 1492 on the same day Columbus set sail. The site says he is French Canadian, implying he was born in Canada. Wikipedia claims his birthday is December 31, 1491 and that Cartier was born in Brittany, France. The website enchantedlearning.com also says that Cartier was born in 1491 and describes him as French, not French Canadian. www.biography.com gives the same information as wikipedia, saying he was born in Brittany, Francy in 1941 and later voyaged to Canada, leading to France claiming the land.
3. www.allaboutexplorers.com claims that Magellan led a voyage funded by Marco Polo, Bill Gates, and Sam Walton that was the first to go around the world from west to east, discovering both the Pacific Ocean (which he named after his daughter) and the Panama Canal. The information on enchantedlearning.com differs from the information provided on the other site. Enchanted learning says that he did travel around the world from west to east, but makes no mention of the Panama Canal. They also do not say that he discovered the Pacific Ocean. Enchanted learning claims that he did name the Pacific Ocean, but that the names signifies that it is a calm, peaceful ocean, not anything about his daughter. Wikipedia had similar information to enchantedlearning.com, mentioning his being the first to travel around the world, but it says nothing about the Panama Canal or his daughter for naming the Pacific Ocean.