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Allyson Boyer Review date 2/2/12 This website is intended for the general public, teachers, and parents. This site is an online newspaper website and the specific page that I was interested in was a story on a teacher having an outstanding classroom environment. There are a lot of available resources as well as various categories listed on this site that you are able to view. Overall, I think that this site has good information; it is current and has a variety of stories, I would however not necessarily use it for research, but more as an enjoyment site. When I was looking over the content of this website I had mostly positive reviews. I enjoyed the fact that this website had multiple links concerning education. The site is updated daily with multiple stories, including stories from decorating your classroom to managing your classroom. I found that there were few things that I didn't like about this website, but one thing that bothered me was that there was no information about the author. It said who wrote the story, but it fails to reveal any information about the author. I also thought that the site was a little busy and disorganized. There were links everywhere. The site as I said before is updated daily, but it is not updated about the story I am interested in which is making a classroom environment enjoyable. When I first navigated to this page I thought that the story looked interesting. There was a wonderful picture displayed that showed the meaning of the story. As I began to read the page I thought it was interesting and wanted to visit the rest of the site. I ventured to the home page and found myself completely lost. There were ads for other products jumping out at me from the side margins, there were multiple tabs that I could click on everywhere, and there was a list of blogs. I kept exploring and found out that not all of the outdated material had been removed. Overall, the site seemed very busy and a little confusing to navigate, but I liked

Sara Scribner 1/24/10 Overview: This website is kid-friendly and offers a wealth of information about the weather. Included are weather games/activities, encyclopedias, teacher resources, environment conservation ideas, and the daily forecast. Content is applicable in a classroom and is fit for its audience of elementary school students. Content: Audience and content for this site are easily determined. The sponsor of this site is The Weather Channel and a contact is given for the site, but other than that I was unable to find an author, a revision date, or a copyright date. To my knowledge, the information provided on this website is accurate, but I do not think one would be able to find in-depth information on a certain topic. Overall, the content on this site is well organized and easy to understand. It also offers a variety of learning tools from activities to videos to glossaries to encyclopedias which is helpful in a classroom. Design: The Weather Channel for kids has a lot of useful information for students desiring to know more about the weather. This visually appealing site downloads efficiently and one can easily move within the website because of superb organization. It incorporates graphics as well as informational videos with elementary students in mind. Although contact information is available there is not a date with the site's last revision or a copyright date. Also, there are a few advertisements on the sides of the page.

Kayla Rider January 23, 2010 Overview I found this site and thought it to be a great idea for art classes to incorporate technology into their classrooms. It is aimed at art teachers and students. It grabs the reader right away with its qwerky sayings and great design. Thought it would be a lot of fun to navigate through entirely. Content This website is aimed at the arts. A portion of our lives that is slowly dwindling downward. It creates a technology environment to enrich and learn more about art. It is geared towards teachers and students but anyone can benefit from this website. Design Of course, being an artsy website, it is colorful and fun to look at. However, the overall design of it is quite applicable as well. It is easy to navigate through and catches a readers attention quickly. Overall, I believe it has great potential for a classroom and/ or a fun afternoon of learning more about art and yourself.

Content: This website was designed for math homework help. It has the four distinct categories; addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, and levels each visitor might need help in. Visually this website isn't very appealing, but the games look interesting for teaching students and help the promotion of a fun learning environment. Clicking on different tabs takes you to the different perspectives of the classroom i.e. the teachers, the learners, and the parents. There are also numerous links to other homework help websites as well. Design: Overall I think the design of the website is good and user friendly. There are a lot of links and tabs, but become useful when it is designed for not only students, but parents and teachers as well. The only downfall to the design of this website is their selling of products gets mixed in with some of the learning material too, so it becomes a little overwhelming. Attribution: I would encourage my students to check out the games on this website because they are a fun way to learn math. I would also encourage parents to play along with their students because it would also familiarize them with the material their students are learning too. The visual aspects of this site promote a fun learning environment and nothing vulgar or inappropriate is presented, making it a safe site to encourage students to visit.

Erin Kirby January 23, 2011 Overview: The sight http://www.brainpop.com/is a good sight for older elementary students, and middle school students. The homepage offers different subjects that a student would learn everyday in school. Each time you click on a link it keeps breaking down into certain subject. This makes it simple for students to use, each link is filled with helpful information. The site is very 21st century based and there are many different things to do such as read, play games, watch movies, and more. The content on this site would be helpful to use in a classroom and would get more students interested and involved in certain subjects. Content: Everything on this site seems simple to use, easy to follow, and has very reliable information. There is a link that allows parents, students, or teachers to see what brain pop is all about. It tells you that there are other brain pop sights that are for younger children and even some for teachers that will help them create lesson plans and other activities. It is an educational website that contains a lot of material that all seems accurate and easy for children to understand. One thing that could be a problem is that on some things on the site you need to subscribe to get the full information, but they do have tutorials and lots of other helpful information. I think that most students would enjoy looking through the subjects on the sight and finding something that they are interested in to learn about. This sight is easy to get involved in and enjoy it at the same time. There is so much information that some kids might stay on for hours! Design: The websites speed is fast and works smoothly link to link. All the videos and games that I tried ran great and I had no problems. The graphics are clear and entertaining for students. When starting at the homepage, it is simple to follow and not distracting at all. There are no pop up that get in the way or take away from learning. This sight is great for

Overview: This website was very visual and very organized. This website was good for educational purposes at the high school level. There were many different subjects with interactive games involved. Content: Each subject that this website offered had alot of information in it. There was a wide range of topics under each subject which helped the viewer get a better understanding. THe content of the site was clear and obvious. All of the information for the providers of the website was easy to find. I couldn't find the lates revision date, but other than that, the information quality was accurate based off of my knowledge. There were few links to other sites. Design:Everything downloaded efficiently. The hompage was very organized. The copyright date was obvious. Navigation was easy and clear cut, it was easy to move around the site. There was alot of interactive games that consituted as multimedia. This website had plenty of useful info. that made the site worth visiting

Lauren Peterson 10-21-13 http://www.brainpop.com/ Overview: This website is a multifaceted educational website that contains numerous subject matter. The site provides educational tools that can be utilized within classroom activities; furthering understandings of various subjects. In order to simplify and further education in particular areas of study, this website makes use of games and videos. Overall, this site seems to be a rather useful tool for a classroom, as it is easy to navigate with content that is clearly understandable. Content: The content seems to be geared towards Jr. High students, although there are other websites from BrainPOP that offer similar content more appropriate for younger ages. This site makes the various subjects within Math, Science, English, etc. very clear through explanation and visuals in videos, as well as interaction through educational games. Design: The use of color and animation throughout this website seem to be rather appealing to the eye. Not only does this sites appearance have the potential to intrigue a viewer, it is also easy to navigate. The links and activities function successfully with very few issues.

Emily Hastings Reviewed: 2/5/12 Kbears.com Purpose: The purpose of this website is to provide students with a fun educational environment. Intended Audience: This site is intended for Kindergarten through fifth grade. Available Resources: This site has its information on it with no need for links to other sites, but it does offer a link for a KBparent site. Overall Review: This website would be fun for students to use during their free time or as a reward for achieving a goal or some other assignment. It is a fun site for students, and could also be used in a classroom as a class or at home. It isn't very broad of a site, it only has a limited number of things to do, which may be hard to use at times and also could get boring. It is hard to navigate around unless you have sound and are able to listen to what each of the avatars are saying. Overall I think this site is more for fun and education at home, or on students own time, but is a fun site for them. Overview: This site offers information in many subjects. It has a lot of reading, so students need to be able to read. It is animated with many characters that talk and videos that are fun for students. It consists of many different things to do and learn about. Content: The content of this website is informative for students and fun. It has unusual ideas and activities, rather than your normal site. After a while on this site you might run out of things to do though, which may become a problem. Design: The design of this website is eye catching, but not very welcoming. It definitely interests you with the characters on the homepage, but is set up as if you were on a ship or something. Unless you're able to use sound this site is going to be quite useless for you, which could be a problem. It is harder to navigate around and the homepage isn't set up very simply so it could be a waste of time until you got the hang of it. Overall the design area is "cute" but unorgan

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

Content: This website contains lots and lots of stuff. It is set up like a classroom and has a reading link, a math link, a playground link, and an arcade link. I think this is more of a game site than an educational one. There are also lots of links to other help sites, but the majority of the links are for advertiser's webpage's, distracting visitors. Design: After looking at it for awhile, I started to feel lost and uninterested because of all the advertisements and the lack of visuals. There are thousands of links for kids to go to, and the actual site doesn't really support a good learning environment. As said above, it's mostly games with reading sections that really looks fun, but if you have to look through the games to get to that section, students will probably never get there on their own. The visual part of this website is interesting. The homepage is pretty boring and filled with links, but the reading and games tabs are designed for younger students. Attribution: The purpose of this site is probably intended to promote learning is fun, but becomes easily more of a distraction with all of the advertisements. I don't think I would promote this site in my classroom without adult supervision because students could so easily be distracted by toys and games.

Overview The purpose of this website is to help kids interact with math and reading. The intended audience is K-8. My overall impression of the website is that is very beneficial and a good free website for students to practice math and reading, whereas with other websites you have to pay to use the website. Content The only thing that I would critique on this website is having other links that would be appropriate and have to do with reading and math. But other than that, I would highly recommend this website. Design I think that everything is up to date but there is no for sure way to tell on the website, there is the copy right that does say 2013 but there is no one hundred percent way to tell if it has all been updated. So this is one thing that I would change on the design for the website.

Trevor Montgomery For this resource, we see another website that in a way, tricks students into thinking they are just playing games by giving them subject related activities. With the subjects of math and reading, students having interactive games, books and comics and even more fun links, without thinking they are doing much work. Through the "Funbrain" arcade, students can also complete activities and must pass obstacles to get through an interactive game board. If they do not successfully complete an activity, they will not be able to get past their current location, but will feel challenged to get through each activity and will most likely attempt multiple times until mastery of the activity. The great thing about this website is that students can also use codes to pick up where they left off on the game board so that they do not have to start over each time they log on (with their parents' permission of course). From grades 1st through 8th, there is a great variability from subjects, and students who are feeling extra brave might even try a level of difficulty higher than their current grade level. As someone who used this website in school when he was in elementary school, I can say that this resource is extremely effective and I think that students will come back to it time and time again. Navigating the website is easy enough. If you type in www.funbrain.com in the url box, you will be directed to the site. From here, you can choose to use the math arcade, reading, fun arcade, playground, and all games tabs, as well as books & comics and more fun activities. This website is specifically directed towards the audience of students in grades 1st through 8th, so as a teacher you can trust it to be safe and student-friendly.

An online text book for teachers