Crap Detection

I can recall getting one of many lectures to follow about being skeptical with information gathered from the internet back in high school. For as long as I can remember, we were told to almost immediately question the validity of the source and to further prove the information as correct. I think this is probably similar to most people's experience with the world of data collection and finding e-sources, etc. and I fully support the "question everything" attitude that goes along with searching on the internet.

There is, however, and extreme end to this idea - which is teaching that using the internet to gather valuable information is frowned upon, even ridiculous. I know that this kind of thinking is because there is so much "crap" out there that needs to be weeded through, but I think there is also a wealth of valuable information that could go unnoticed to those told that the internet is useless in terms of academic credibility.

I fully encourage teaching skepticism on the internet without scaring a user into thinking that all information is bad or untrue. By being able to use the internet for research purposes, I think a lot of doors could be opened in terms of access and, with the right kind of "crap detection", the internet could be a very powerful tool to be used in academia.