USING THE INTERNET FOR RESEARCH

With more than 100 billion pages on the world wide web (and more being added each day) it can be difficult to do effective research on the internet.

The Blind Children’s Fund website is primarily a clearinghouse website with lots of references to websites and webpages all over the internet. Using our website helps you to find reliable sources of information. If you are on this website, we assume you have some basic internet skills, such as using a browser to find some information.

In discussions with parents of blind and visually impaired children, we have found that parents range from being very experienced in their ability to find reliable information on the internet but others would like more basic information, such as how do I look up a topic and do more research on my own or how do I know if this website is reliable. This particular BCF webpage was designed with the latter group in mind.

These websites will help you to develop some basic skills as described. Just click on the link for more information.

Wiki-How is a family of websites that describe how to do nearly anything. It is advertising based, meaning people who visit the website and click on the ads generate revenue for the content developer(s). If you click on the ad it will take you away from the main website. You can generally use your back arrow to go back to the primary webpage. This particular webpage has a user-friendly approach consisting of four parts: (1) Knowing where to begin, Getting Good Sources, Evaluating for credibility, and saving your Sources. It also has a Community Questions and answers (Q&A). http://www.wikihow.com/Do-Internet-Research
If you are interested in doing more serious internet research online, consider these sources that describes differences in research, how to avoid overly commercial websites, and how to document your sources if you are writing a paper or need to go back to your research later:

http://netforbeginners.about.com/od/navigatingthenet/tp/How-to-Properly-Research-Online.htm

http://www.virtualsalt.com/evalu8it.htm

This website has links to a number of parent-to-parent websites for families of children with various disabilities, including blindness and visual impairment. https://www.supportforfamilies.org/internetguide/parents.html

http://info.exceptionallives.org/exceptional-lives-iep-guide?gclid=Cj0KEQjw6My4BRD4ssKGvYvB-YsBEiQAJYd77e8jL_VZbWsfuLUfgMe1Ia_X3LVNxzZCb8O7VP9N5QAaAlQF8P8HAQ

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DISCLAIMER

Please note that this website is provided as a resource for information and education, and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice and consultation. The links to other sources are not recommendations of BCF nor are these links all-inclusive, but rather representative of websites that offer information. The Blind Children’s Fund always recommends that you use information only from knowledgeable and well-recognized sources since there are many scam-types of programs now proliferating the Internet. Always consult your child’s health care provider(s) and educators for additional reliable and accurate information.