News: Internet Detective

THE RETURN OF THE Internet Detective

A second edition of the highly acclaimed "Internet Detective" Web tutorial has just been released. Produced with funding from the European Union, through the DESIRE project, the tutorial offers Internet users some online training so that they can learn to sniff out the clues needed to evaluate the quality of the information found on the Internet.

CASING THE WEB!

The Internet is a great resource, but how do you know that the information you're looking at ain't a load of baloney?

There's a lot of real gems to be found, but you have to be careful out there - information on the Internet can mis-inform you, con you and degrade your work.

Internet Detective is a free, self-paced, interactive tutorial on the WWW which provides an introduction to the issues of information quality on the Internet and teaches the skills required to evaluate critically the quality of an Internet resource.

Written by staff at the Institute for Learning and Research Technology at the University of Bristol, it uses tutorial software developed at the University of Newcastle, which saves your scores and your place so that you can re-visit the course and take up where you left off. The tutorial takes a couple of hours to complete.

SO WHAT'S NEW?

The new version builds on material in the original but has some new features:

• Lots of new quizzes - to increase the interactivity, offering you the chance to try your hand at Internet detective work.
• Teaching materials - to support teachers, lecturers and trainers who use the tutorial with their students.
• An exercise that covers the Web-hoax - to highlight the fact that on the Internet, things are not always what they seem.

AND THE WORD ON THE STREET?

The tutorial has been positively received in a variety of sectors. Over 16,000 people registered at the "detective agency" in the first nine months, and there have been some positive reports ....

This online tutorial offers a stage-by-stage evaluation of "content, form and process" in a Web site, and is aimed at both users and creators of Web pages. The methodical approach usefully opens up the intuitive assessments we apply when arriving at a URL for the first time. (The Independent)

Just a quick word of thanks for the Internet Detective - as a relative Internet novice myself I've struggled with how to convey to students the importance of not taking as gospel everything they find on the net - I can now point them to the Detective which does a brilliant job of explaining it and gives the skills needed to evaluate the quality of information. (Teaching & Learning Support Service, Kingston University)

I think it's a very useful resource, and I'm immediately going to direct people on our courses to it when we tell them about the Internet. Lots of useful information and the quizzes are fun. Told me some stuff that I didn't know. The examples of how to look at a Web page are wonderful. Very clear and well thought-out. (Computing Services, Edinburgh University)

Don your trilby and join the Detective in sniffing out clues about the quality of a site from the moment you arrive, or even before: your first clues can be picked up from the Web address. (BBC Education)

GET ON THE CASE!

So please feel free to get on the case and teach yourself some Internet detective skills! Internet Detective can be accessed for free from: