Regardless of your content area or grade level, you will likely ask your students to do Web-based information gathering or research. As such, you must instruct students on how to conduct meaningful and safe Web-searches, how to evaluate sources for credibility, and how to ethically and legally use those sources in their work. Remember that the concepts of source credibility, fair use, and copyright compliance are complex subjects. Adults struggle with them. Assume you will need to provide ongoing instruction about these things with your students. To get started, however, prepare a mini social/ethical lesson that will provide your target audience with “just-in-time” instruction around the big ideas — how they will be expected to be safe when looking for information online or how to evaluate online resources for credibility. Select and present these big ideas based on your content area, your audience’s grade-level, and based on your typical lesson activities (the types of online activities/information-gathering your students typically engage in).For this lesson, you may want to create an at-a-glance resource that you can post in your classroom environment and/or distribute to your students (and parents) that will help them conduct safe and effective Web searches and evaluate sources for credibility. These are complex ideas and should be tailored to your target audience and the type of online information gathering they would typically do in your classroom. .
