Teaching for Information Literacy

21 Century Information Fluency presents a number of resources that can be used to understand how to evaluate web 2.0 resources especially blogs.

A podcast (10:36 minutes) with Joyce Valenza points to key tips and ideas about what to look for when using blogs for research.

In Joyce Valenza on Evaluating Blogs Joyce says,

Blogs are essentially primary sources and can provide lively insights and perspectives not documented by traditional sources. They compare in some ways to a traditional interview, with the speaker controlling the questions. Ripe for essays and debate, blogs present not only the traditional two sides of an issue, but the potentially thousands of takes. And those takes take less time to appear than documents forced through the traditional publishing or peer review process. Blogs allow scholars and experts written opportunities to loosen their ties and engage in lively conversation.

This article from the 21Century Fluency Project provides an overview of the key things to look for in a blog as well as a well designed rubric for evaluating the legitimacy and usefulness of a blog.

Web 2.0 and Bias

It is essential to consider who is creating all this information and whether there is any real substance to back up the ideas and opinions that anyone can easily publish on the Internet.

Evaluating Wikis from: Information Fluency Meets Web 2.0 PowerPoint by Joyce Valenza

1. What is the purpose of the collaborative project and who began it?
2. How many people appear to be involved in editing the wiki?  Does it seem that the information collected is improved by having a variety of participants?  How heavily edited were the pages you plan to use?
3. How rich is the wiki?  How many pages does it contain?
4. Does the project appear to be alive?  Are folks continuing to edit it?
5. Does the information appear accurate? Can I validate it in other sources?