(My dog Tucker)

Growing up in a generation centered around technology and the internet, some students today take everything they read online to be undoubtedly truthful. So, the statement of purpose/goal of this activity is to encourage students to question the authenticity of a source. In doing so, students will become better at identifying unreliable sources so that they can determine what aspects of a website make it either unreliable or reliable.

This activity should be utilized in 5th to 6th grade classes.

For this activity students are put in small groups ensuring that at least one student in each group has a pet dog. Next, students are asked to help their fellow classmates decide if they should send their dogs to Dog Island by exploring the website, http://www.thedogisland.com/company.html

Students are asked to use this website to answer the following questions:

1. Who are Xiao Min and Han Fei? Do these acclaimed company owners come up when you put them into the google search engine? Can you find any other source that states Xiao Min and Han Fei are the cofounders of this company? What does this tell you about the reliability of the site?

2. How would one get to Dog Island? After reading the directions on the website type in the address of Dog Island on google and see if the only way to get there is in fact by solving an extremely confusing maze like puzzle that the Dog Island site claims. Does dog island website give exact coordinates of where the office is located? What does this tell you about the credibility of the site?

3.Who is the author and publisher of this website? Can you find what year it was published? What does this tell us about the validity of this site? If you don’t know who wrote the site how can you know if they are credible? If you don’t know when it was published how do you know if dog island is still “open” to send your dogs there? What does this infer about the validity of the site?

Next, have students read about the real Dog Island that is not in fact an island full of thousands of dogs that relocate there to be free of humans. Have them read the New York Times article,

https://www.nytimes.com/1987/03/08/travel/a-florida-shore-where-solitude-rules.html?pagewanted=1

Have them also glance over the introduction of:

https://www.academia.edu/3245604/Dog_Island_Shipwreck_Survey_1999_Report_of_Historical_and_Archaeological_Investigations

Now, students will engage in a class discussion about why they would never send their dogs to this island. Ask students when they knew the website was fake and how they were able to prove to their fellow classmates that it was not real. The goal of this activity was to demonstrate to students that they cannot simply believe everything that they read on the internet. Moreover, it is important to question a website’s reliability by checking to see if it has all the valid components such as the author, publication date etc. This activity also encourages students to fact check a website with other websites that they now know how to deem credible and reliable sources.