As foreign language educators, our first reaction to the WWW may have been "Wow!" at seeing the wealth of authentic documents available to us on the Web. But as we explored further, we may have been led to wonder about the quality of these sites, particularly as sources of materials for our courses.

Here are some sites which give guidelines for evaluating Websites.

Critical Evaluation of Information Sources
Site maintained by Kathleen Shrock, Head of the District Technology Department of Dennis Yarmouth Regional School District on Cape Cod, MA. This site has a variety of "Critical Evaluation Surveys" appropriate for elementary, middle school and secondary school levels. It also has links to articles on the topic of site evaluation. Follow the link to her page "Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators" for more general information.

Evaluation Rubrics for Websites
Tammy Payton of Loogootee Elementary School West, Indiana, provides three evaluation forms for K-12 students to assess the quality of Websites, and gives links to other sites with information on evaluation. Follow the links to other parts of this excellent site on designing school Websites.

Thinking Critically about WWW sources
This site by Esther Grassian of the UCLA College Library has a list of questions to ask in evaluating a site for its content, source and date, and structure.

Why Evaluate a webpage
This site for a course on Information Sciences taught by two professors of Library Sciences at Purdue University includes online practice evaluating some sites.

Citation Styles
What if you want to use information from the Internet in a research project or paper? This chapter from Online by A. Harnack and E. Kleppinger, published by Saint Martin's Press has information on how attribute the source in a number of ways including the MLA and Chicago styles.

Kathryn K. McMahon