Critical Thinking, the Library and the Internet
This assignment involves searching, finding and evaluating Internet sources and comparing them to traditional library sources like reference books, books, journals and magazines. There are no right and wrong answers, only very thoughtful ones.
You are to form groups of three or four students and each group should choose one topic from those listed below. The groups should search both the Internet and the library for information about these topics and create a bibliography of good, bad and incredible sources with brief evaluative annotations. Each student in the group must see all the sources and collaborate on the annotations.
Evaluating Internet Resources from the Library Research Help page gives some guidelines for evaluating both Library and Internet sources for authority and accuracy.
Find about ten sources of information about one of the following:
spontaneous human combustion
enneagram
aroma therapy
Shroud of Turin
palmistry
glossolalia
feng shui
dowsing
Try and find them from a variety of sources including as many of the following as possible:
A general encyclopedia
A specialized encyclopedia
A magazine article
A journal article (academic periodical)
A newspaper article
.gov Internet page
.net Internet page
.com Internet page
.edu Internet page
.org Internet page
Not all topics will be available in all these sources, but try to come up with a good selection of sources (approx. 10) and make annotations(comments) that tell the class about the differences you have found. Use a critical eye and write thoughtful, interesting comments about each. Including your thoughts on the accuracy, reliability, intention of the writer and any other information you might glean from the source. Be sure and give the complete URL for Internet sources. For the library sources include all the information anyone would need in order to find the item again: the author, title, source, (if appropriate also vol, issue) date and page numbers.
Jan
Sauer
Sept.
20, 2000