Everybody must have heard that old idea that states...."Don’t believe in everything you are told" We can well apply it to the reading of online information. It’s nice to think that knowledge is waiting for us, just a click away, ready to be used! But instead of being something that we can wolf down, we should spend a considerable time chewing on the information, before digesting it.

There are certain criteria that a website must meet to see whether the facts it provides are reliable or not. Actually, there’s not a sole criterion for analyzing web pages, but there are some core components that should guide every analysis.  Here are some points, that I consider really important:

•        Relevance: the information's level of importance to a particular reading purpose or explicitly stated need for that information
•         Accuracy: the extent to which information contains factual and updated details that can be verified by consulting alternative and/or primary sources
•         Bias/Perspective: the position or slant toward which an author shapes information
•         Reliability: the information's level of trustworthiness based on information about the author and the publishing body.  

    Looking for relevant and reliable information can be time consuming, but I think that we can do our best if we identify those criterions that are personally relevant and try to design our own templates of websites reviews. 

Source: 
 - Coiro, Julie, "Teaching adolescents how to evaluate the quality of online information", http://www.edutopia.org/blog/evaluating-quality-of-online-info-julie-coiro
- https://vle.whs.bucks.sch.uk/mod/page/view.php?id=51043

"...Beyond the "tech comfy" to the "tech savvy"..."

Limitating the teaching of English to the mere transmition of traditional contents can only lead to our learners' apathy. It’s hard work to abandon the comfortable zone, but we must start looking for ways to introduce all the novelties that shape our learners' realities.

In this new world of information and technologies, students need to be taught new literacies that can cope with, and complement, their actual abilities. Selecting and judging relevant information, connecting with a wide community of readers and writers are some of the new skills we should start thinking of; they are called digital literacies. These novel skills involve being able to effectively make use of the available technologies as well as understanding the intricate world of social practices that surround the use of new media.

By providing activities and tasks that can contribute to the improvement of these literacies, we will be doing a lot as regards the education of 21^st century’s citizens. What is more, we can start to bridge the historical gap between what students learn in their classrooms and what they are outside it.