Address: http://www.malepregnancy.com/
What a great bogus site! Some people put some serious time into creating it. Using Valenza's four criteria, it would superficially seem to meet the standards for a real, valuable website.
Content: many of the subsidiary links works, but when you click on them they really don't tell you much about the science; there is much more about the dynamics of the website itself.
Authority and Credibility: Click on the links to the doctors and you get very strange information. Click on information about the patient and it gets weirder still. Lastly, if you look at the sponsoring organization, it is the John Jay School of Law, a real law school, but not noted for it obstetrics program.
Bias and Purpose: I think this was intended to be a parody site with not real desire to intentionally deceive visitors.
Usability and Design: A very "busy" website with many links to be taken places one or two level deep before the joke is revealed or the link stops working. Attractive design, looks professional, and seems to want to provide you with as much information as it can about this man's pregnancy. It could easily be mistaken for a real site by an unsuspecting user.
Site 2: True But Little Known Facts About Women and Aids
Address: http://147.129.226.1/library/research/AIDSFACTS.htm
Ok, this one is really a fake and seems pretty obvious to me and if you scroll down to the bottom of the page it is all revealed to have been created by a librarian at Ithaca College.
Content: The "facts" are outrageous even for our knowledge of AIDS 15 years ago when the site was first produced.
Authority and Credibility: The sources are bizarre plays on words or strange, but seemingly real journals. Another give-away is the one person cited as a source whose name can be phonetically said as: what a lying fool. Lastly, there is no University of Santa Anita in the United States.
Bias and Purpose: The superficial purpose was to state some "facts" about AIDS, but the real purpose as stated by John Henderson, the librarian, was to create a fake site for his students to learn about critical thinking about the web. I clicked on the link to the Ithaca College library and Mr. Henderson is still working as a reference librarian.
Usability and Design: This was a pretty basic site even by 1996 standards. It is your typical one-page screed that today would have shifted over to a blog or a tweet page.
For a lesson on the appropriate use of the Internet, I would have the kids read Eight Surprising Web Sites That Schools Can't Access http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/04/eight-surprising-webites-schools-cant-access/ I would have them brain storm reason why these sites are blocked at most schools. I would also have them read an a synopsis of CIPA http://www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/cipa.html and try to understand why the federal government passed this law. I would then have them try to figure out how Internet filters could be reconfigured to be more selective in what was blocked and what was allowed. The class would also have a debate about what was "allowable" content and why deciding what that is is not as easy as it sounds.
For a lesson about personal information on the web, I would have kids read the article Fired for Facebook: Don't Let It Happen To You http://moremoney.blogs.money.cnn.com/2009/04/21/fired-for-facebook-dont-let-it-happen-to-you/ and I would have them read Employers, Get Outta My Facebook http://www.businessweek.com/debateroom/archives/2008/03/employers_get_outta_my_facebook.html. We would then have a discussion about how much privacy to do have vs. how much should you expect. Lastly, I would give the kids the assignment to examine their Facebook account and see if they believe they have posted anything that could embarrass them or keep them from getting a job in the future.
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