How do you know if you can trust what is published in a blog? How can you know if a blog is a good one to share with your students?
Read the following article that the author references on page 37, in the third paragraph, to help thinking about that question.
http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=4
When posting a blog it is important you do your research. Like the link above says you can't trust everyone. Based on your experiences with a blog and your past knowledge you can find a blog that you can trust. You should always double check before showing information to your students. You never want to mislead or misinform your students. Always be cautious and use your common sense.
ReplyDeleteA reading that we were assigned earlier this semester explained that one of the ways to determine whether a blog is reliable is to look at its followers, the comments, and the users profile. Also, there are lists that libraries and government websites post with the best blogs for a certain category or the most influential blogs for that year. I've gone to some of these lists before and they are extremely helpful because you know that a government program or facility has viewed them. Another way to tell if somebody is credible is simply comparing their blog to some other sources. You should never believe what one person says, look at all the information portals before you show your students what you have discovered.
ReplyDeleteI think it's really hard to trust what you read on the web these days. I think the best way to know if something is true and reliable is to double check your knowledge of it and if you don't have any knowledge check somewhere else to reassure that your information is in deed correct. I feel like blogs would be really hard to determine if they are accurate because there really easy to make and you can write whatever you want in them. Maybe a good way to back a blog up is to cite the sources where they got the information from. Also like mentioned before the more followers the better. If there is no followers then chances are I would not take my information from the blog.
ReplyDeleteIt can be very difficult to determine whether or not something on the internet is trustworthy. The web makes it very easy to lie about who you are, so even if the person claims to be someone--it doesn't necessarily mean thats true. The easiest way to tell if a blog is reliable is to cross referance the information with something else on the web or maybe even your own knowledge I think.
ReplyDeleteto know if a blog is good, you have to be able to trust the information. It has to be reliable and not fabricated or something fake.
ReplyDeleteReading and trusting something written on the internet is always a hard thing to do. This is because you do not always know the credibility of the writer. Especially in a blog it is vital to do research at first to make sure what the writer is saying is true because a person can blog about anything they want, truthful or not. Followers and comments on a blog are important because the more followers a blog has the more legitimate it most likely is. A good way to check if a blog is legitimate is to double check vital facts, and if they are correct than you can start to build trust with the writer of the blog. So, although there is no way to trust a blog for certain, there are good steps in building trust with the writer of a blog.
ReplyDeleteI think that its honestly difficult to determine what is true and whats isn't on the internet. There are so many different ways to make information look true. I can agree with Alyssa when she says to cross reference the information that you find. So many people can take and post anything that they please.
ReplyDeleteI think that Blogs are not the most reliable sources of information. My reasoning for this is that most blogs out there are opinionated, showing the author's views on a certain subject. This doesn't mean that these opinion oriented are not useful in the classroom. If a teacher wanted to show a blog that contained information based on a certain subject, from a certain view point, the teacher could also show an opposing blog. The teacher would also need to do research into the subject that they are looking for blogs on to knew whether they can use the information in the blog or not.
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to determine what a good blog would be. In terms of teaching students, blogs are often opinion-based and information may not be properly researched. As Richie already said, we don't want to mislead our students. I think it is important to check information on a blog with other resources before showing students the blog. Blogs also have a tendency to be biased. A biased source doesn't usually go over well in a public school setting due to different views and different opinions.
ReplyDeleteWith the technology these days it is easy for anyone to become an "expert" on any subject, it doesn't always mean that what someone says about something is true. Blogs are an easy way for people to talk about things and express their ideas, they don't have to have any truth to them at all. One way to know if a blog is reliable is by having a basic knowledge of the subject, if not check other sources and see if they are saying the same thing, double checking and research are important. Blogs that cite their sources are more reliable then those that don't because you can view where they got their information for yourself.
ReplyDeleteIt is important when adding information to your own knowledge base to make sure that your understanding of the information is correct. You need to do your research to make sure that the sources you are using are valid. By making sure that your source has sources is a good way to determine if it is valid or not. Also making sure that you look at more than one source to see if they agree or disagree, if they agree there is a good possibility that it is a valid statement.
ReplyDeleteI do agree with this blog that is difficult to believe people that call themselves experts that have opinions different to yours. I notice this type of thing when I'm researching things for my blog, or just trying to gain more knowledge about a certain thing. I summarize my articles about similar subjects, and I look for things that are most talked about and compile my knowledge in that sense
ReplyDeleteSome things that I observed about this article are that there are no authorities. But we are in a way. We are the ones who have experiences and education that could title us as the authorities but in a different sense. No we are not teachers leaders or creators of every subject, we are experiencers.
ReplyDeleteI agree with facts and appearances. I have often tried to limit myself to only those sites that appear to be the “most reputable” on appearance. I would stay away from places like Wikipedia since I knew that anyone could change, delete or add material. But that is not alway correct either. There are checkpoints in the system to deter people from adding information that are false.
Statistics are often misleading because who ever is collecting data is collecting information based on their opinion. But it can make you think. It can create a change of thought that you once had or compound what you thought.
Very good article. I enjoyed the authors opinion and education on the subject. Good resource.
I agree with many of the previous comments posted about the reliability of blogs. Since blogs can be written by any source, before you use them in the classroom you must double check the information posted to make sure that it is reliable information. As the article above stated, there are many ways to ensure the reliability of the blogs you are using in your classroom such as the amount of followers and who they are, the other links, blogs, and articles that are posted on the blog, and the information on the blog itself such as generalizations and statistics. If you are still unsure about information provided on a blog, I wouldn't recommend using it in your classroom. Instead try to use a blog as a form communication among students instead of a source of information.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to researching something on the internet I believe it is very important to evaluate what you are reading about. Something that I think people need to keep in mind when assessing a blog, like the article says, make sure the information is coming from a reliable source. Moreover, comparing to what people stated above, it is hard to find a reliable source. When reading blogs it is important to not believe everything you read and trust what is sited, but even then what is sited is not always reliable. I guess what I am trying to say is be careful what you believe because anyone can post something on a blog.
ReplyDeleteYou can never know 100% for sure if you can trust all of the information that a blog has to offer. The article points out that people go to great lengths to word information in a way that will sway people to feel the same way about a topic as the author does, so even if the information is correct, the wording affects how we interpret that information. It is extremely difficult to feel confident with information found online, but as others have pointed out, I feel that the best way to feel confident is to do your own research to see if the information that you find backs the information from the blog. You definitely have to put in the work on your own to decide whether or not the blog is reliable enough for you to want to use in your classroom.
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