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Enhancing Secondary Math Education with the Net Reviewed by Betina Turner 8/31/10 ITEC 2360-02 This website has hot links to many different web sites that help teachers use technology in the classroom to teach math. Each one of the links has a synopsis on what you will find on that site. It is very easy to navigate. The Web sites appearance is simple but effective. It has a list of categories so you can simply bring up just a list of links for specific areas of focus, and it also has "asks an expert" links. I clicked on several of the links this site contains and I did not come up with any dead ends. Some of the links not only will help me find ideas for teaching math to my students but some of the sites will even help with my current math classes that I am taking. I believe I will be using this site a lot in the future. It will save me a lot of time that I would have normally spent in search engines weeding out the junk! The only problem that I could see with this site is that it may not remain on the web forever and may not get updated because it was designed by UEN to accompany a class for secondary math education teachers and it is not clearly stated when it was made and when the last update was. But all the links I went to did work!!

Samantha Snethen- Feb. 5, 2012 Overview: OER Commons is website designed to allow educators from all over the worlds to share educational resources for primary, secondary, and post-secondary school. The website is free to view and has tens of thousands of lesson plans, classroom activities, assessments, video and audio lectures, games and much, much more. The site also has a bookmarking feature, in which users can bookmark new online educational resources to share. This website is a great tool for educators of any grade level to find and share wonderful classroom and teaching resources. Content: At first glance the site doesn't seem to give a clear idea of what it contains. However after reading some of the smaller print and doing some navigating it becomes clear. It provides a clear link to the creator and sponsor of the website, ISKME, so finding information about the organization is easy. One downfall about it is there is no last revision date provided, so it is hard to determine how old some of the resources available are. There is also little interactivity with the site. The majority of the content however, is easy to navigate, well organized and achieves the purpose it was created for. Design: The site is not designed to be very eye-catching and seems confusing at first glance. There were no directions for users available and again there was not last revision date provided. However, there was more than enough information and resources for almost any subject for almost every grade level. The information was also presented in well organized manner, which makes it easy for the user to narrow down the types of resources they are searching for.

Locate open education and creative commons resources for teachers and students of all grade levels

Ross Lindstrom - September 21, 2009 Website Evaluation #2 - Teaching Comparative Government and Politics This website is a blog-based collective of information and resources for the purpose of aiding instruction of comparative government and politics. The audience is primarily secondary and postsecondary teachers of government and politics who are seeking resources about and/or specific examples of comparative government they can use for their class. The impression I had was that it was an interesting and at times very applicable for teachers, but the blog-style format and lack of information accessible on command makes the potential application of this website in a teaching environment limited. The website took a little while to load, which I believe can be attributed to the length of the continued thread of blogs/discussion. (Excuse my lack of correct internet jargon). The first thing I noticed was a cramped column of text, outside links, and pictures organized in a sequential, most recent blog entry- at top format. The website lacks a visible title. Even the purpose description is vague: "Teaching Comparative Government and Politics is a complex and demanding task. We can all use all the help we can get. This cyber place is somewhere to facilitate helpful interactions." The blog entries usually include relevant pictures and multimedia links. Despite the lack of outside sources, the blog is archived from 2006, so there is a large amount of articles to sift through. Even though I questioned the main author's legitimacy and authority in the area, all the articles contained something that had practical classroom application. The content is also constantly updated, with multiple meaningful posts coming within the period of one day. It is a bit difficult to determine the exact purpose of the website, as well as the main author. The name Ken Wedding is given as the author, but doesn't offer more information in the way of his legitimacy as an ed

Cassie Nelson February 3, 2012 Overview The purpose of this site is to help Agriculture Educators teach in their classroom. The intended audience is Ag teachers. This website has lesson plans to help Ag teacher in the classroom. Overall, I like this website and will use it for my classroom. Not only does it have secondary lesson plans but plans for adults and middle school as well. Content At first glance you can determine the content and audience. The material is clearly identified. There is information about the author and contact information. There is not revision date provided but the content seems to be updated frequently. The content appears to be complete, organized, and meets the needs of sufficient information. Design The homepage loads efficiently. The home page is attractive and you can tell where you are within the site. The site is easy to navigate. The information in the site is worth visiting. A downfall to the site is there is no date of last revision. There is also no copyright date or date the site was established.

Overview: This website is intended for teachers and provides lesson plans and videos from grades Pre-K to Post Secondary. It offers free information in the subjects of Art, English, Math, Science, Social Studies and Health/Physical Education. This website would be wonderful for teachers who are looking for a new lesson plan on any subject or for any grade. If the teacher creates a free account, they have the chance to find and share any information and also have the privilege of seeing the standards that are required for the school they are teaching in. Overall, this website would be a very useful tool for teachers to plan and share lesson plans, video, other websites and interactive games. Content: After reviewing the content of this website, I have found that most people would not have any trouble navigating and finding information on this page. The homepage is a great place to start because it allows users to login to their account, search the webpage or click on the subject that they would like to further explore. One problem I encountered with this website is that it is hard to tell who the intended audience is. By the websites name one would think that the site was just for teachers, but when creating a free account you are able to select from students, parents, teachers, school administrators and librarians even though teachers would probably benefit the most from this site. All of the lesson plans seem to be up to date, but some of the videos are out of date. The links on the site are active and running and provide great information and resources. Design: While exploring this website, I was very disappointed to find that the graphic design did not have strong eye appeal, but the layout of the site was easy to move around. One of the best attributes of this site is the external links, which are helpful in finding more information in that topic and they were all working properly. There is also a lot of information available to anyone and after

Megan Switzer September 11, 2011 Overview: ESL Lesson Plans and Resources is a website that does just that provides hyper-links to ESL lesson plans as well as other ESL resources which include activities for ESL learners. The targeted audience for this web site is mainly for teachers, although it could possibly be used by secondary education students in the completion of activities. The whole purpose of this web site is to provide links to web sites with available resources for web sites and pretty much anything else that teacher's may need for ESL. If one needs help with ideas for lesson plans or activities or even games for an ESL classroom, this web site is highly beneficial. Content: The overall content of this web site was helpful in the sense that it provided helpful links to ESL lesson plans, activities, ideas etc. However, the information provider was quite difficult to determine due to the fact that there was no one specific site, it was simply a web site full of other sites. The information currency was also a little difficult to determine as there was no date of when it was last revised. This may be an exception for the website, itself, did not have updates or an author but the links to the other websites may have contained the separate information. Overall the content of the site was well organized and easy to follow, all of the hyperlinks seemed to be in working order and beneficial to the search I had done. Design: The overall design of this website was not the greatest, yet it was still usable. The home page did not have an appeal to my eye upon first glance, however with each hyper link contained a description of what it was. The whole web site had the purpose of giving links to other useful websites which could possibly be why there was no currency information and or information in which to contact the web site developer. Although it is easy to navigate and headers clearly define what each link is used for, there is always room to improv

Posted by Lyndsey Neelands on 9/19/2009 Cool Science is an education website branched from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. The purpose of this website is to inform the community about science. Content: This site clearly identifies its material and the authors. This website is authored and updated by a medical institute so its information is up to date and accurate. The information is also for many different ages and skill levels. Also, there are resources for teachers available at this site. The links to other sites are relevant and working properly. This website would be helpful to any elementary or secondary science teacher looking for up to date research. Design: This website is very easy to navigate and very appealing. The website is organized and all of the graphics add to the purpose of the site. The links are appropriate and contribute to the value of the website. The sponsor is clearly identified and is easy to get information on. This Cool Science website is an extension of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute so a lot of the links go to other resources from Howard Hughes Medical Institute. This is significant because the design of the pages is consistent, even when using a link to navigate from the homepage of Cool Science.

Basic website for the Color Wheel, the primary and secondary colors.

The purpose of this site is to educate young elementary students on the primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The webpage is fairly simple and straight forward and includes pictures for more visual learners. In addition, this website gives other fun activities linked to other topics: Seed Germination, Co2 reactions. Content The content of this webpage was 'worth bookmarking for future reference'. I found the sponsors of the page to be not labeled correctly, or given proper dues.. I couldn't find the contact information of the website author either. Overall this webpage is good for k-6 students in many different subjects. Design: This page was simple in design, and rather easy to understand. All the parts of each page were purposeful in contributing to the topic and making pages interesting. I found the homepage to be a bit bland with only a list for navigation to other pages, it lacked a personal touch. I did like, however, how it was broken up into grade level, then by topics. Quite useful for planning broad spectrum lessons plans. This page showed not date of revision but the 'about us' page says who the admin is. ~A.Rodriquez

Katya Larson February 2013 Overview: The purpose of this website is to visually map major events in history chronologically. There are brief descriptions of the events for each map. The audience is for educators and secondary level students. There are many map and picture resources under the "Maps & Modules" section including previous editions of the website. I think this website is well set up because it is easy to navigate to the time period of your choice to see the corresponding map. It is nice that there are brief descriptions so you can easily review what the map is about. I think it is a very easy to use and useful site.  Content: The content is accurate and easily accessible. The maps are interactive and user-friendly. There are many links within the site to access different content. The content is free of bias and informational.  A possible downside is that there are no dates of revision, but there is evidence that the content has been revised in the past because you can view past versions of the website.  Design: The website itself does not attract the eye readily. While the information is easy to find, there are few graphics or colors that are appealing (excepting the interactive maps). The information is clearly labeled and the maps have useful descriptions. It may not be "fun", but this is a very useful site. 

The main purpose of this site is to inform people on the life, works, and style of Chaucer. As the visuals, or lack there of, suggest, this sight is intended for secondary education level students. The overall content is good but a bit overwhelming, ultimately making this a decent source for high school level students. The content of the sight appears to be accurate and there are references provided. However, the author of the site is unknown and there is no easily accessible way of contacting him or her. The text is well organized and informative. The content, while lacking a specific author and contact information, is accurate and relevant. The design of the text is very simplistic, but clean. Graphics are limited to a single picture. There is no indication of when the article was last updated, but when talking about a dead poet from centuries ago, there isn't much to keep up to date with on his biography. The design could have used some work, but it was by all means functional.

Karsten Hiser January 30, 2011 Overview Worldwar1.net is an internet site that provides information on World War 1 (WW1). The intended audience for this website is anyone who looking for information on WW1. This site is probably for individuals in early secondary education. On this website you can find a timetable for events that happened during the war, links for other useful websites, and videos on WW1. I think this website was efficient at its purpose. It provided a lot of information on the topic. However the biggest lack of this site was the information providers. There were no names of authors or editors listed. Design For the design of worldwar1.net I found that it was good in many of the areas on the evaluation form. The speed was very fast; there is little wait time for the page to load. On the home page the only area this site lacked in was eye appeal. The background is white and had one black and white picture on it. However the site was very easy to navigate and had no "dead ends" on the site. This site provides the means of accessing many types of media. Worldwar1.net contained a long list of DVD s that could be watched to gather more information on WW1. The website is rather current and provides content in an appealing way for users. Content At first glance, worldwar1.net it is easy to determine the content. The currency of the site is clearly provided, however it is not updated frequently. This can be due to the fact that it is a history site, so facts on the subject do not change frequently. This site has a lot of quality content and is very organized. The information provided is accurate and uses correct grammar and spelling. The weakness of this site is the lack of information provided on authors and editors.

Overview: This site is really geared toward students and not so much for teachers but I liked it because it has a couple games that create real-life scenarios. In these games students had to do calculations that applied high school math. I think the website would appeal to secondary education students in more advanced math classes. It also has link that show students about jobs in the financial field and they can hear from people who currently work in this area, which I think can help students find the area more interesting and they may be able to connect better with the subject that way. Content: Most of the content is definitely for older more advanced students. The games are slightly challenging must are intriguing at the same time. The website has many links to various areas of finance that can help students find jobs in the future if they are thinking about this field. It also shows them that there are people their age running billion dollar companies. Design: The design of the website is geared toward high school students, showing money, nice cars and vacation spots. The links are also very organized and easy to see where stuff is at. The games are set up in an easy to follow manner with guided steps of how to start.

Brick Cegelski 9/5/11 Overview: AAG Center for Global Geography Education offers educational resources for teachers and students. It is very easy to access and is a useful tool for teachers. It provides teaching modules that relate to current events and issues. The website would be very useful to teachers trying to find a good way to teach one of the themes of Geography and to get a look at different geographical issues from a worldwide perspective. Content: The basic content is easily accessible and easily found. The intended audience is stated on the main page. Its intended for higher education teachers, college students, and teachers of Advanced Placement in high school. The authors are clearly defined and information about them and how to contact them are also given. The sponsor of the site is clearly identified and displayed on the main page. The material was updated in the last year and is current enough to still be relevant for the information. The content is complete, well organized and accurate based on my knowledge of the information. Design: The website is easy to follow and downloads quickly. The website isn't too flashy but everything is clear and concise. The contents of the site are clearly indicated along the left side of the main page of the website. Information for making contact with the sponsor and the authors is readily available under the about us tab. The copyright date is easy to determine. All of the links work properly and lead to good information. The graphics are helpful and contribute to the information on the site.

Overview: This website is a really good site for math help. It offers help on many topics of upper level math. The Fact Monster Homework Center also offers information on the history of mathematics and quizzes are available for the student. Games are also available to the student. The site is through Fact Monster and the Homework Center offers help on many other subjects in school.  Content: The Homework Center offers help on numbers, formulas, factors, fractions, measurements and money. The website is mainly geared toward the secondary level of school. Games are also available to the student for help with studying. The author of the webpage is not available but the copyright date and company is. The content is up to date.  Design: The design would appeal to older students. There are colors and the graphics aren't boring. The site is very easy to navigate. The links are big and bold and easy for the viewer to see. 

From the web site: At Web English Teacher educators can take advantage of online technology to share ideas and to benefit from the work of others. Beginning teachers can find guidance; experienced teachers can find inspiration. Think of it as the faculty library and faculty workroom on a global scale. Because the most important part of teaching isn't the technology.

Overview: This site is really geared toward students and not so much for teachers but I liked it because it has a couple games that create real-life scenarios. In these games students had to do calculations that applied high school math. I think the website would appeal to secondary education students in more advanced math classes. It also has link that show students about jobs in the financial field and they can hear from people who currently work in this area, which I think can help students find the area more interesting and they may be able to connect better with the subject that way. Content: Most of the content is definitely for older more advanced students. The games are slightly challenging must are intriguing at the same time. The website has many links to various areas of finance that can help students find jobs in the future if they are thinking about this field. It also shows them that there are people their age running billion dollar companies. Design: The design of the website is geared toward high school students, showing money, nice cars and vacation spots. The links are also very organized and easy to see where stuff is at. The games are set up in an easy to follow manner with guided steps of how to start.

Overview: This website had a large choice of topics to choose from where a student could get quick facts or information on a subject. On the homepage all the different subjects ranging in alphabetical order from Art to Social studies could be researched by students. The site led to other sites that contained the information and all the secondary sites appeared to work fine. This would be a good starter website for teachers to send students to check out because they know for sure information will be correct because the site is operated by the US Government specifically for kids to use. The site was very navigator friendly which works for the benefit for both the student and teacher. No update was listed on the page was the only problem again. The website says on the bottom that it is a service from the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, part of the U.S. General Services Administration Content: The content provided informational resources for students to use to do their research on a variety of topics. The website made it easy to find the different topics and the next link would take the student to another page that listed more specific content regarding the larger field of study. I focused on the kids part of the site but there was also more information for adults and teenagers. For the kids, they had three choices to pick from starting with learning stuff like information, playing games or watching information videos. Design: The design of the website was easy to follow. A bright background with slightly darker tabs made the page aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Three different tabs were listed for the kids section with learning stuff, playing games and watching information videos. The design of the site was easy to navigate and easy enough with navigation that kids in elementary school would not have a problem with it.

Paige Hanewald 10/21/13 Overall: This site would be a great activity to high school students as an introduction of Shakespeare as it takes them in a "time machine" back to Elizabethan time period. It is very current and includes interesting language that is intended for the current high school audience. It gives links to Elizabethan-knowledgeable resources, assisting them through each step. If the activity could align with standards of your English curriculum, it would be a new, fun introduction of William Shakespeare. Content: Although the author of the site isn't clearly identified, it is assumed that he is a teacher. Assuming that, the teacher appears to be qualified to present this information and it seems to be accurate; all of the links work and provide thorough insight into the activity. The activity definitely goes in depth to the Elizabethan time period and lifestyle. Design: The design is similar to that of a Webquest activity. It is aesthetically impressive and flawless! It gains interest with its creative layout and features that Wix.com provides, including directions on little things that could be confusing. It is very easy to navigate from step-to-step of the activity and could be easily interpretable by the intended audience. However, there is neither a works cited page, nor a teacher's page like that of well-done Webquest pages.