This is a rally last week regarding the teaching bills going through Idaho right now. Senate passed them today, word needs to get out about what is going on! Please watch minute 1:10-9, I know it's long but PLEASE.
Nathan Hissong
1/23/10
Content:
In any good government it is important that students know who represents them. I chose Senator Mike Enzi's site just as an arbitrary example. Like many Congressmen's sites this is an informational site. Yes Mr. Enzi has a campaign site but I did not choose that one for a reason. The site features a featured story, a way to find issues in your county and even get an email newsletter. What really caught my eye though is that he has a separate tab for students. Here you can get valuable bill resources and even sign up for a internship which in my experience was amazing.
Design:
The design is rather appealing and makes the site easy to navigate. It is nice to Enzi's picture. It would help students identify his name with a face. I like the health care tab and a featured story that affects his constituency. Being that Enzi probably pays someone lots of money to work on his site it has to be designed well and updated frequently. Good design.
Overview:
As previously stated it is important for students to understand the congressional process and who represents them. It would be a cool assignment to use this site to see how congress works and who the main players are.
Amanda Lamey January 23, 2010
Overview
I chose this site because RosettaStone has seemed to help lots of individuals learn a second or third language. I was impressed when I came to this site. You can choose from a variety of languages, you can purchase packages or just one at a time. With each package it listed the price and a button for you to add it to your cart. They have a toll free number to call. There are videos of people who have used it and learned from it. I think this is a beneficial part in helping someone purchase this item. I know it would help me. I would want to know from experience whether a product is good enough to spend hundreds of dollars on. This website is designed for anyone, but limited to people with credit/debit cards. Any one person can learn a language with assistance and it has been proven that younger children learn quicker and faster than adults. They had a contact button for further information. It also had other available resources like case studies from a classroom, stories of individuals who had used it, videos of people who had purchased and used RosettaStone. It had different options to chose from like; Home school, Schools, Organizations and Personal. The purpose of this site is to let you explore multiple options and not limit you to one thing and one language, its open ended. I think it's a wonderful site and easy to use. I also think RosettaStone's product is expensive which is a downfall because as a college student I have enough bills and money concerns to worry about to where I can't just go spend three hundred dollars to learn a language on my own time.
Evaluation of Design
The overall evaluation of the design was accurate. It had useful information and sites to attend to gather further information. Instead of reading the material you would have to purchase it, but it showed what levels were for sale and for how much. It even had it available for different schools and organizations. It had a contact us box
Tonya Searles
The purpose of citationmachine.net is to aid anybody who is writing a referenced work to properly cite the material they are using. The website is dedicated to preventing plagiarism. The intended audience is high schools, universities, teachers and independent researchers. The website provides easy to see choices for referencing in the major formats used in writing such as APA, MLA, and Chicago. The user would select the format choice they wish to use and fill in the boxes with the appropriate information, and the machine generates a complete reference in the proper format. The site appears easy to use and read.
For a student (or author of a paper) who wishes to cite their material this website is definitely relevant, accurate, and purposeful. However, although I can clearly see the website has been updated since my last visit there is no indication of its currency. The citations generated are in line with current standards when putting in an APA reference. There is also a link to an older version of the site which also indicates currency, albeit without a date. The creator of the website is David Warlick, and while there was little information about him on the site, a google search revealed him to be an author and educator, indicating he may be an authority in referencing materials. Strengths of the website include clear step by step instructions on how to use the citation machine. There are also links that will take you to places to evaluate the originality of an essay to further avoid plagiarism. A weakness of the website is the amount of ads on the site, but it is free, and a network, so ads are expected.
The design of the website is not overly ostentatious. There are simply colored blocks with text to click on, and the orange and reds are not overly bright and distracting. I prefer websites that do not have a lot going on, and that have only links that serve a related purpose. With the exception of the unavoidable ads, this website fits th