Information Literacy

Information literacy is defined by Wikipedia, "to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand." We can teach our students to be information literate by teaching them to NOT trust everything we see on the internet.  Instead we can look at several different webpages that could be useful and show them what to look for in a good website.  The students will at first need to locate the AUTHOR of the webpage, and hopefully they will be able to see his/her credentials on the topic that the author is trying give us.  Secondly we can see how old the information is, students don't need to be looking at a webpage with out of date information. Third we need to look at the specific content of the material, we need to see how useful the information is, and making sure how to spot any vague content.  Lastly we can look for any bias that the author might they might have.  Some bias is good, but depends on the research that a student needs.  We really cant prepare students on how to research on the internet, except to warn them that there is bad information on the internet and you cant trust everything we see.