Introduction

There are many different websites that promote water conservation. There are likely to be several aimed at the people living in the student’s area. These websites belong to State Government, water authorities and water companies that sell the water. There are also not-for-profit groups that have water conservation material on the web.

Activity outline

Students will be evaluating and comparing water conservation websites. They will:

Develop criteria for evaluating a website
Identify a number of websites that are aimed at people living in the local community
Discuss how sincere they think the website is
Use the criteria to evaluate several websites
Choose their preference for a website explaining why they think it is better than other websites.

Criteria

Develop a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate the website. Decide how students will mark the criteria e.g., 1 to 3 or 1 to 5, the highest number is the best evaluation. Examples of criteria are:

1. Easy to find information on the website.

2. Easy to read and follow written material.

3. Easy to understand how to reduce the wasting of water.

4. Webpage looks interesting.

5. After looking at the material you want to try some of their ideas out.

As a class decide on the criteria and the scoring.

Identify the websites

As a class locate the most important websites:

1. Your State government.

2. The water companies or authority that supplies the water to your community.

3. The water authority or company that stores and processes the water.

4. Not-for-profit organisations that are interested in your local community reducing water use.

5. Any other group interested in water supply e.g., irrigators if you live in an irrigation region.

Discussion

After identifying the website have a discussion about the purpose of the website:

How much of the website is about helping customers/water users and trying to reduce unnecessary water consumption?
How much of the website is really about promoting the organisation, trying to make money and make themselves look good?

Closing activity

Using the student scoring, rank the websites. Make a list of points about what makes a good water education website. Keep a record of the student's work for the action activities.

Evaluating Local and State Water Conservation Websites

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