• The Five W’s (and one H) of Cyberspace is part of the Canadian Media Awareness Center’s site. This one-page handout provides a list of appropriate questions to ask about any Web site, and also describes how to decode a URL (Web site address).
• Evaluation of Web Sites. This component of a larger University of Chicago professional development Web site for teachers contains a tutorial with many details about how to evaluate Internet information for elementary and secondary education, including a printable evaluation checklist (http://cuip.uchicago.edu/wit/2000/curriculum/homeroommodules/assessEdSites/evalchecklist.htm).
Home-schooling families choose homeschooling in large part because they feel very strongly about their responsibility before God to direct their children’s education. Carefully evaluating instructional materials – both traditional and online – is an essential component of that responsibility.
Kathi Kearney has been working with home-schooling parents for 23 years. She works as an educational consultant for parents of gifted children. She has taught at the university level and is a free-lance writer. You will often find Kathi in Crosswalk.com chat rooms, helping home-school moms.
