Taking a Look at the DHMO.org Website

The internet is a great resource but this paper takes a critical look at the DHMO.org website, in particular, and looks at categories during this assessment that addresses specific critical tools in evaluating this web page specifically. Using primarily the web page evaluation checklist published by UC Berkeley1 and concurrently S.P.I.D.E.R.2 which is the acronym for Source, Purpose, Information, Domain, Educational, and Reliability. It takes you through how the web page evaluation checklist helped in discerning the authenticity of the web page.

I enjoyed reading as far back as I can remember. Books, magazines, newspapers - anything I could get my hands on, I would read. In the early 1990’s with the availability of the internet I could easily type in a few words of my choice and I would get a return of information. I took it for granted that the hits were information; but some of the websites were opinions and not necessarily facts. Today, use a few strategies to quickly scan a website for authenticity by using either a web page evaluation checklist published by UC Berkeley1 or S.P.I.D.E.R.2 which is the acronym for Source, Purpose, Information, Domain, Educational, and Reliability.

I choose to evaluate the website http://www.dhmo.org/ with the web page evaluation checklist. It is broken into five categories; Look at the URL, Scan perimeter of page to answer specific questions, Look for quality indicators, What do others say? and Does it all add up? I go through the first process. I begin by clicking on the link and it takes me to a very colorful page organized in three columns. First column is headed Special Reports and there are links below. The second column is centered on the web page and is titled Welcome. The third c...

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... S.P.I.D.E.R. a strategy for evaluating websites.(technology connection) (source, purpose, information, domain, educational, and reliability). Worthington: Linworth Publishing Company.

3Jonassen, D., Kim, B., (2010). Arguing to learn and learning to argue: design justifications and guidelines. Educational Technology Research & Development. 58(4). 439-458.

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Scott, S. (2009). Perceptions of students' learning critical thinking through debate in a technology classroom: A case study. Journal of Technology Studies. 34(1): 39-45.

Angeli, E., Wagner, J., Lawrick, E., Moore, K., Anderson, M., Soderlund, L.,

& Brizee, A. (2010, May 5). General format. Retrieved from http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/560/01/ Engle, Michael (2012, September 19) Cornell Universtiy: http://olinuris.library.cornell.edu - Evaluating Web Sites: Criteria and Tools