Q In your textbook, Introduction to Information Literacy for Students, Chapter 5: Evaluate Sources, the chapter identifies peculiar features of web pages and uses them to evaluate these sources. Using the criteria discussed in chapter 5, evaluate the following two websites: 1. Child Welfare Information Gateway 2. The Exceedingly Serious Psychological Effect of Child Abuse In your evaluation point to specific aspects of the websites that support your evaluation and explain whether you think the site would be useful for a research project on the psychological effects of child abuse. In your responses to your classmates' posts, explain why you agree or disagree with their evaluations. Look at pages 76 & 77 of your textbook (see e-book pg. 93-94) which discusses how to critically evaluate web pages. Often, the Internet serves as a virtual soapbox -- a place where anyone can rant, rave, push their views or belittle others. When doing research online, you need to look at the objectivity of the site. In other words, make sure the site presents information in a fair and balanced way. Anytime you see a bias, whether you agree with the bias or not, it usually serves as a warning sign to stay away. Even someone with the best intentions can have factual errors or major omissions whenever there are strong feelings involved. If you do find a bias in a web page, here are some questions to think about: • Is it hidden or deceptive? • Is it relevant? Is it recent? Is it reliable? • Are the advertisements and/or sponsors of the page are biased? If so, what effect does that have on the page itself? • To what degree does the bias interfere with the quality of the information? • Is the author paid or given incentives to write positive reviews? Discussions Policy: To earn full-credit for this week's threaded discussions, you should post a direct answer to the discussion topic question, then also post a minimum of one other response to a topic which is in reply to something your classmates or instructor has posted (for a total of two posts per week). All of these posts should be made on a minimum of two separate days, your first post needs to be made by 11:59 pm Wednesday and your reply to a classmate by 11:59 pm on Friday. All posts should further the discussion in a significant, original way (a minimum of one paragraph per post, 3-5 sentences, is a good guideline). All discussion participation will be graded based on frequency and quality and any weekly submissions that do not meet the above conditions will have corresponding points deducted from their grade book scores.