Determining Credibility /July 11, 2014 by Tyler Wood

Credibility is an on-going challenge for educators. This is not a skill students learn one year and know forever. This is a constantly evolving critical thinking skill that must be addressed regularly in school. As the Internet becomes more pervasive, understanding credibility will become more and more important. Before the Internet, we could look in books and generally trust the publishers to do a lot of the fact-checking for us. If we still weren't sure, asking our librarians would be a very useful next step (still is a useful step if you are at the library). However, more and more children (and adults) are just Google searching for information on the Internet and looking for sources that way. This can lead to more and more problems with getting good information, as anyone who cares about any controversial topic can attest. Although I do appreciate social media for creating a place where people share ideas and, seemingly more and more, respond with asking for sources, it is still bemired with misinformation. If you click below, you can see my lesson handout on the subject of determining credibility.