Welcome to the Internet Detectives Web site! The purposes of this site are to:

• provide an overview of the project;
• offer support materials and resources;
• provide information about participating teachers/librarians, schools and the advisory committee;
• develop an online library of curricular-related and student recommended sites.

Internet Detectives is a Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) initiative for middle-school teachers and students, helping them to acquire skills in accessing and critically evaluating information found on the World Wide Web. Classes begin the Internet Detectives process by asking a question about a topic. After they locate Web sites that address the question, students evaluate the sites and write descriptions of the sites' contents and features. Classes then select sites that relate to their question and recommend these sites for publication as part of Internet Detectives' Library of Student Recommended Sites. This collection of sites forms a student-generated library of curricular-related Internet resources that students and teachers around the world can use.

Today, as school library media specialists are identifying expectations for information literacy, some administrators, teachers, school board members, parents and politicians are raising questions about the value of unevaluated Internet resources in schools. Internet Detectives provides a process that helps students learn to think critically about the information that they find on the Internet. In this way, it offers a positive alternative to electronic filtering of Internet resources and helps students learn skills that they can apply in both school and non-school settings.

Internet Detectives Web site:

http://www.madison.k12.wi.us/tnl/detectives/

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