The Internet - Gold or Coal

The Internet with all its wonders, can be a virtual Pandora's Box, at the tips of the fingers. We can be transported into arenas of deep philosophical discourse or into a world of virtual garbage. As educators we are not to fool our selves that we can control the multidimensionality of the digital technology our charges engage in or interact with. We need therefore, to explore what is out there and find out what our students are interested in, in order to help students become critical users of this pervasive technology.

Parents, educators and other interest groups need to learn strategies to evaluate websites in attempts to guide the hungry fertile minds to holistic knowledge acquisition. The saying 'garbage in garbage out' provides a fitting analogy of so much of what is available on the Internet. If as educators we fail to teach our children how to recognize garbage we may wake up one morning to find our children have disappeared, having been lured away by the proverbial music of the Piped Piper.

Teachers can help students evaluate websites and the quality of information by using the 5W's and 1R technique;

• What? - What does the article or information say? Does it answer the question you started with?
• Where?- Where is the source of the information? Does it have a person's name, organization, phone number, e-mail address, site address?
• Who? - Who is the author? Can you get in touch?
• Why? - Why did the author write this information? What is the purpose? Is there a clear point of view? any bias? any important omission?
• When? - When was the information written? Is it current?
• Really? - Is there any way to check the accuracy of the information using other sources? (Lewin,2001)