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Skills for Evaluating Web-Based Information

Absurd? Yes. However, this false belief – that children are somehow naturally more able to use technology and are also somehow more Internet savvy – is a common one. Problems with Internet information and in more traditional forms of information are well documented. Professors of entering college undergraduates observe that students “are ill prepared to function in a technological and information-rich environment” (Quarton, 2003, p. 120). The Stanford Web Credibility Project (Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab, 2004) documents gullibility in the entire Internet-using population. While it is true that many of today’s youngsters live in a wired world from birth and are hence more comfortable and adept with technology than their elders, problems remain. These problems are old problems: how to detect misinformation; how to tell when someone is lying; how to counter the subliminal commercial messages that saturate much broadcast media today; and how to evaluate the strength of an argument, among many others. While much could and should be done to apply technology to improve web information quality, a major portion of the task will continue to fall on users. Children and youth are traditionally considered among the most vulnerable members of our society. This paper focuses on the skills that people, especially young people, need to evaluate information. With this focus, I can only provide a brief overview of a vast territory, synthesized through the lens of the user’s cognitive perspective. The important problems of information quality and the philosophical controversies concerning censorship and filtering are beyond the scope of this paper. The first section describes and defines the basic process of evaluation, synthesizing ideas from cognitive psychology and critical thinking theory. The second section discusses the importance of goals and information context, and the third discusses the critical