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Overview: This website is designed to assist teachers in making lesson plans for their classroom. This website is usedful because it is intended for a large range of audience from Pre-Kindergarten through 12 grade. Content: This website is organized so that users can quickly and efficiently find their needed subject lesson plans. This is also dependable because the sponsor and the authors are listed, along with contact information. The links that are posted are current and work properly. There is a lot of information, the only argument could be that there is too much and it may distract the user. Design: This website has much color and many designs. It is appealing to the user because it is navigable because of the graphics. It is also very organized so that the user can quickly find the section they are in need of and click on the link that leads directly to the needed information.

Courtney Lovell February 2, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this is to give teachers materials and lesson plans. The intended audience is educators in grades kindergarten through eighth grade. This site allows teachers to past lesson plans they have used so that others can have them for their resources. I think this website is great the only drawback is you have to sign up to use it. This is a free website and I will use it for my future references. Content: This site is very useful. At the first glimpse it is very clear what the website contains. The author of the site I available and so is a way to contact the author. The site is very organized and easy to use. The information on this site is very reliable and easy to understand. The only quality this site is lacking is the revision dates. Design: The design of this website is fantastic. It has great speed and the homepage is eye appealing. The links on this site work properly and are useful. Multimedia works well and the browser compatibility is effective for multiple browsers. Information is easy to find on this site and is easy to use. The site is lacking directions for using it properly but is a good tool for teachers.

Bradley Sharpski 2/6/12 Overview: This site is very helpful to any teacher. I have used this site before and it comes in hand when looking for any type of lesson plan. From what I have found, this site contains just about everything a new teacher could want. It has lesson plans on all subjects, helps you even create lesson plans, gives you links to other educational sites and just a community base when you need help with anything. Content: This site is easy to locate and uploads very fast. The information providers are not really easy to locate and this site shows it hasn't been updated in the past few months. The quality of this site is very good. The content is correct and offers sufficient information to the subject at hand. This site seems very organized and seems to have no grammar errors. There are links to other sites which have helpful lesson plans related to what you're looking for and provide them to all. Design: The homepage is very easy to navigate through and allows the user to find almost any lesson plan on any subject. The homepage contains the sponsorship and when it was first created as well. The navigation of this site is great. There are links to everything which is very helpful. The multimedia of the site is hard to find. I had trouble with this but looking through some lesson plans, the site provides links to multimedia sites which you can use from there. After looking through this site, the content seems to be in working order and presented very well. This site seems to be up to date and has tons of links to follow which could be very helpful.

WebQuest website

Chelsea Brunski 10-08-12 Overview The purpose of this site is to provide help to students with math. The website allows student or teachers to create worksheets. They also have an interactive game section and flashcards to help with math subjects. There is also a homework helper section. It is intended for students' k-12. There is a resource that is very helpful which breaks down the entire grade levels. My impression of this website is that it is an okay website but not the best. It has some very useful and neat components to it which I would use often. It doesn't look like much effort was put into making this site. Content This website says that it is intended for k-12 but there isn't ever different sections on this particular site that distinguishes that. The link that is provided is the only site that actually has different levels of content. I do think that the homework helper is a very useful tool for younger age kids. It can only help with basic math skills. If you need help with upper division math then this tool would not be useful to you. The worksheet section is one of the best things that this site has on it. This tool isn't just for students but can be used by teachers. It allows you to create your own worksheet dealing with different subjects in math. The only problem is that this is also for more basic level math. The game section is very small and limited. It only gives you games concerning addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. This wouldn't be for any of the upper grades only for lower grades. Design The website doesn't draw you in at all. You have to read the homepage to really understand what the website is even about. It doesn't look like much effort was put into designing this website. There are different tabs on the left hand side that allow you to navigate the site. These are easy to navigate to. It looks like the website really just wants you to go to the other link that is provided. This link is much more

Jessica Lee 10/21/2013 Overview: The purpose of this site is to help students (elementary and middle school aged) improve their math skills by offering flashcards, online games, a homework helper, and worksheets. However, the overuse of internal links within the introduction makes navigating through the website confusing and distracting. In addition, because it requires Java (which I don't have), it is useless and inoperable. The only decent thing about this website is that it provides an external link to Mathway.com - a website that answers basic math problems. Content: They have decent material as far as helping students improve their math skills; however, because the website is inoperable without the Java, the content is basically nonexistent. Their ideas include having the students work on flashcards, playing content-rich games, providing worksheets, and a basic homework helper that answers their problems. Design: The design of this website is so displeasing, that I knew that I would never use it after first glance. The color scheme is distracting and the layout is unorganized. Some positive points about this site, however, is that the table of contents on the side is useful and tells the viewer what to expect. In my opinion, they should have concealed the internal links in the introduction so that it does not take away from everything else. It's very choppy to the eye rather than being smooth and connected.

This site provides several examples of universally designed ebooks for students ages 10 and up. ebooks provide scaffolding techniques to understand passeges (editable by teachers), read content back to students, provide Spanish translations, and allow markup and note taking

Scott Chanthongthip on January 25, 2010 Overview: Although the website has seven books students can read from, it offers a helpful tool in learning to read while listening to the computerized voice. The computerized voice can be distracting to young readers though that cannot put aside the monotonous tone and lack of colorful personality a real teacher can provide. Manipulation of the tool bar for the story can help students highlight text, translates highlighted words from English to Spanish, and allows students to stop the reading to answer critical comprehension questions. The design of the website looks simple at first but I think if this a website to help students read it should be in simpler terms. Use of the computerized reading voice can read the whole page to students, so this can be helpful to navigate the pages. Content: Most of the content is laid out simply but it takes a while to get used to navigation of the different tools. Students that would use this site would probably have some background in reading already, as stated ages 10 and up by the UDL. It takes previous knowledge of reading ability to understand some of the more complex stories the site offers. Using the "Stop to Think" option asks listeners to pick multiple-choice answers that show the student comprehends the story they just heard. If readers miss the questions, clues to the right answer help the reader find the correct answer. As a teacher, I would use this site sparingly because I believe the computerized voice reading to students can bore them quickly. The website also takes away the ability for students to learn from their peers. The books used in this selection from the UDL provide just small glimpse at the plethora of reading material out there. The project team for the website consists of people with Education Doctorates , Master's of Education, and translators. As far as the content update, I could not find when its updates or when the site came into ex

John Pokallus 31 January 2011 Overview: The Ecological Society of America - Ecosphere publication site is an online-only, peer-reviewed journal created to foster prompt publication of scientific findings in the field of ecology. The intended audience of this site consists of professional, or student researches within academia, government agencies, or other private companies that are involved in the broad field of ecology. The resources available are a collection of scientific publications that have been submitted to Ecosphere and accepted after a peer-revision process. Additional resources include links to other journals that are associated with more specific aspects of ecology. This site is very well organized and easy to navigate; the content information is credible and relevant to the intended audience. Content: At first look, the basic content of Ecosphere is easily discernable and it is stated explicitly in a brief paragraph titled "About Ecosphere" located immediately under the title-banner of the site. That same paragraph implies the intended audience via the selected language used to describe the site. Information providers are clearly identified for all publications and contact information is provided. We can assume that all content providers are qualified in the subject matter due to the rigorous peer-review that all publications are subjected to. All information on the site is dated and relevant to the demography of the intended audience and updated on a monthly basis. Information quality is superb and everything is well organized. Further information is available and related sites are linked under the title-banner of the homepage. Design: No errors occurred while downloading the homepage and it did so very efficiently. The basic design of the homepage was appealing and very simple, leaving no uncertainties about the content or location of information within the site. Ecosphere did not provide directions for navigating the site; however, I belie

The purpose of the site was to gather information about running. The intended audience was ones interested in running. The only thing that attracted me was the title. After that everything else was not "cool." The content format was scattered. You had to bounce around looking for information. Overabundance of content topics requiring a fee. Way too much advertisement. The websit was crammed. Too much of nothing.

Ryan Magrum Sept 15th, 2011 Overview: This site is a tour through the exhibits of a natural history museum. The purpose is to experience the museum without actually going there in person. There are many menu options on the home page for kids and for educational purposes. I like this site personally because for students it's like a field trip without ever having to leave the class room (computer room). The site seems fairly main-stream and appropriate for all ages. Content: This is the basic museum home page on the internet. The site has all the information for the museum (contact info, research and curation, business…). There are many links to other similar sites as well as games for kids and to resources for teachers and to merchandising. There are many pictures to lure the user into the site. In terms of the galleries page, The site is a basic tour with captions for each of the interactive picture of real things in the museum that explain what you are seeing in the picture - what a tour guide will tell you. The pictures are mostly for highlights of the museum geared to getting you to visit in person. There is a plethora of information within that is very easy for students and the public to learn from. Design: The site is easy to navigate. All the pictures and colors make the user feel welcome. At first, getting into the specifics of the site and finding what exactly you are looking for is a little difficult but the ease of navigation allows the user to orient their self in the contents after a little exploring. There is a search box so the user can search the site for specifics contributing even more to the ease of navigation. All the advertisements in the site are relevant to education and/or the museum and appropriate for kids.

Michelle Jacobsen 9/16/11 Overview: This website is useful to both teachers and students. It focuses on grade levels K-6 and helps improve students reading skills. Teachers can get onto this site and create an account and put on the different book that their students are reading. After they do that the students can then log in and find their teachers name and practice their reading skills. Content: This website is used to help students improve their reading skills by reading for practice, recording their reading, checking with comprehension quizzes and listening for modeled fluency. For teachers there is a "teacher's corner" that helps them learn how to run through the website and even gives printable directions for students and their parents. Design: The overall design of this website is eye catching but not so over the top that it's hard to manage. It is extremely easy to navigate around and has a video on the homepage explaining the reasoning for the website and how to use it.

AAA Math is a site used for learning, practicing, playing and exploring.

Meghan Snell September 11, 2011 Overview: AAA Math is a very useful site for the learning of children. It's goal is to help children learn any subject in math, give tools to practice with, a few games to play based on the desired subject and some exploring available afterwards. It is definitely a learning based site instead of a site based on playing game after game. Information about the site authors is difficult to find but a section about the site itself and its purposes is easy to find. Every kind of math subject you can think of is given in a table of contents on the side and a header at the top gives options to link to any grade from K-8th. Content: As stated above, the authors and sponsor were not easy to find which is a valuable part of the site itself. Although there is that one little problem, the content of the site is very nice for the use of children. I like how it is organized into different subjects as well as grade levels and then does each in order through steps of learn, practice, play, and then explore. The site serves the purpose intended but another faulty is that no information about revisions is available. Design: There is not a lot of design to the website. The home page contains no graphics and just gives information about the site itself. This could make it hard for the website to be appealing to children. Parents and teachers would be able to look past and see the value of the site but children often look of graphics and fun. Everything is clearly labeled and organized though which makes it very nice to navigate.

This website is for K-8 grade level. It is interactive math lessons. You can pick what grade and what subject you want to practice. It is a drill and practice type of website. When you go to a subject it shows you how to work out the problem then allows you to practice. I think this is a good website to allow children to practice when you first introduce a new topic.

Overview This site was well organized and visually appealing. It was an educational website with games for children. On the homepage there are two options, one is a number game and the other is an alphabet game. Both of the games are very simple and would only be good for preK and Kindergarten students. Overall this site is not an effective one. It has very little worthwhile content and while it may have exceptional graphics there are many other sites that offer more games and variety. Content The overall content of this site is very limited and not appropriate for a large number of age groups and would not work well in a classroom setting. There are only two games which may bore children after a while no matter how interesting the color scheme is. Design The design is phenomenal it is childish yet simplistic. The cartoon characters are cute and introduced by name allowing the children to have something to relate to. It pastel color scheme is age appropriate and very pleasing to the eye. The site is well organized

Audrey Stevens 9/20/2011 Overview: Kidsites.com is a site that is directed towards elementary teachers, parents of elementary kids and elementary kids themselves. It is basically used as a guide to find educational websites, as well as some websites with fun activities and games. Resources for this site were nearly limitless. It provides so many useful sites and activities, along with the separate tabs for parents and teachers. Overall, in my opinion, I found this site to be very useful for my information needs and very well designed and easy to use. Content: There were few things that I found that were candidates for the "no" column. One would be that there was no contact information or way of contacting a person if the user has questions. The other would be there was no revision date provided. Other than that I found nothing wrong. All of the links were working properly and led to educational websites or educational activities/games. It was easy to understand how the site was set up and how to navigate through the site, as well as there were no grammatical errors. The provider of this site seems to have known what they were doing and all of the information on kidsites.com seemed legitimate. According to the rating for content evaluation sheet, kidsites.com is very useful for one's informational needs and worth bookmarking for future reference. Design: For the design portion of this site, it only had a few problems such as there was no information for contacting the sponsor of this website. Even after going through and looking through all the tabs and links, I never was able to find any information on, or way of contacting them. No date was provided for when the website had been last updated either. I also went through and looked for this and never had any success. A copyright date was provided but no date of revision. When accessing this site, it is very easy to read, it has a simple, easy to follow design for children and it is incredibly easy to

This site is a great site to use in conjunction with another search engine like wikipedia. Although this site is art based, it's a great starting point when reviewing or researching an artist. This site guides you to museums, archives, artists, book, articles and more relating to whatever you'd like to research in the arts. It is like the beginning of a maze so to speak that will guide you on your way toward more legitimate sites with more resent and filtered information relating to the topic of your choice. The design is much like that of wikipedia, tool bars on the left give more specific places within this search engine to do some researching but after clicking an artist you are given many picture of there work which is of course aethetically pleasings. Although unlike wikipedia, not just anyone can change information on the site and there are verification dates in the upper right letting the viewer know that the page they are on isn't giving false information.

Laura Rice 2/5/12 Overview: The purpose of this website is to expand knowledge about artists and their work. This website provides a large number of artists, articles, art news, and images. This websites audience is anyone who is interested in art, teacher, student, or buyer. Over all this website allows people to search by artist, work title, or art museum. One really cool feature about this website is that it allows viewers to see the top 30 artist searched. This feature is really helpful to art students because sometimes you don't know what artist you want to research and so on so this is a great way to start into things. The art cyclopedia is an awesome research engine if you're looking for a certain piece of art as well. When you click on an artist it brings you to a page with a short history of the artist, which museum the art is in, what pieces are on the market, image archives, articles, multimedia, books, and their galleries. This is a great website for information and overall knowledge. Content: As mentioned before this website excels in area of imagery and information about individual piece of art. The art search engine provides visitors the opportunity to search by artist, title of the work, art museum it is located. If the viewer didn't know any of these aspects of the certain piece of art they could browse by the medium or time period. This website has an incredible amount of artist's material. For each artist there is a short history of his or her life, a list of museums there art is in, and any type of multimedia that has been published about the artist. There is also access to different articles about art as well as art news. Viewers can also order posters or prints of their favorite art which is another beneficial aspect to the site. This website provides viewers with the access to thousands of artists work. Design: Overall the design is good. The website is organized neatly and clear

Allison Lindgren September 21, 2009 Website Review http://www.bestedsites.com/ "Best Educational Sites" is a collection of educational games for all areas of learning. Its fun layout with bright colors and bouncing graphics make it most appealing to young children. I think it would be very useful for teachers looking to integrate learning games into their curriculum. There is also basic information on everything from astronomy to engineering. Content Summary: This website has a lot of information in it, but there are no citations. Most of the links work well, but a few are dead ends. The website tells when it was last updated, which was recently, and who it was updated by. The purpose of the site is clear, though. The fun graphics and bright colors would appeal to children, and all the links are geared towards elementary to middle school aged children. There are no obvious spelling or grammatical errors. Design Summary: There are no problems downloading the pages except for the few broken links. The homepage is attractive to young children but the bright colors could be an eyesore if looked at for an extended period of time. The person who last updated the site gives a contact email. The information is well organized into several links provided on the home page and every page has a link to the home page, which makes this site very easy to navigate. The graphics and animations make the site fun and appealing for children, and each page displays a theme common to the information being presented.

Shea Mangold August 31, 2010 This website is used to connect you to different websites like a map or navigation page and it's great for that. This is also aimed for more of a elementary teacher audience it seems like. The owner is Janice Berthiaume, MEd and she has a MEd so I would guess she is qualified and the information is good, but she doesn't have any background information except there is a place with her email to contact her. There are also a bunch of different sponsors and even a place to make donations. It is very well updated, it was last updated August 26, 2010. All of the links worked pretty well except it took forever to load and some led me to a internet is not working page, and took along time loading after that. But when I got to the pages I was very pleased, there's so much information and lessons to choose from. The content was great but in saying that, the design is awful. On the hope page it looks as though someone just threw it together in a hurry, tried to be cute, and then added some cheesy clip art pictures and then threw in some very annoying bouncing books to distract you the entire time. Also, at the bottom of the page all of the sponsors, donations, author information is very bunched together; it does not look very professional. The other pages it links too are pretty simple, bright colored background with links in a different bright color. Everything is on it that needs to be just not great looking. I would have to give this an A for content but a C or D for design

Posted by Mitchell Clark 9/18/09: Lesson Planet is a search engine designed to save the effort of designing various lesson plans by providing over 150,000 teacher approved lesson plans and over 75,000 worksheets. This site provides material for all subjects in grades K-12 and also includes state standards. Content: This Education World sponsored site has an incredible amount of information that has been provided by many teachers in various fields. It has lesson plans for all grade levels and all subjects including math, science and technology, language arts, education, social studies, health, art and music, and it also includes research resources. Each lesson plan includes the author and date that the lesson plan was posted. Also every lesson plan is rated on a scale of 1-5 by other teachers so you don't waste your time searching through inadequate lessons. Another great feature about this site is that because teachers can post their own lesson plans, there are always new and relevant lesson plans. These plans are easy to access due to multiple links which are designated to different fields of education i.e. science or math. There is also a search bar at the top of the web page that allows the user to search specific lesson plans as well as narrow their search results to grade level and rating (1-5). Overall this is a well organized site that provides a wealth of knowledge. The only thing to keep in mind is that these plans are posted by individual teachers which could contribute to a partial bias in the lesson plan. Another thing to consider is that there is $40 dollar membership fee for this site which is an inconvenience, but this fee also discourages the submission of junk lesson plans and worksheets by other internet users. Design: This site is well designed and very easy to navigate. There are no advertisements or links to unrelated material. The sponsor of the site and contact information is clearly displayed at the bottom of the page as well as t

-Overview: Lesson Planet is an excellent resource for teachers to find ideas and lesson plans for specific topics and grade levels. They are able to type in exactly what they are looking for and it is just like a Google search engine just for lesson plans. There are other links to related articles and blogs for teachers, and there are places where teachers can access the standards. It is a very good place to create lessons from and gain ideas for teaching successfully in the classroom. -Content: The content is easily accessible from exactly what the teacher types in to find. There are specific tabs and easy instructions to help the teacher find what they are looking for. It is a very helpful resource tool that teachers can use to plan activities for specific subjects, for a specific standard and find worksheets and articles that relate to the topic they are teaching. There is a huge amount of content within the website that is easily accessible for anyone who would like to use it. On each page there are tabs to things that relate to the topic as well as a list of subtopics that are easily accessible as well. -Design: The creators are in the process of creating a new design that may be more visually appealing, but currently the design is very simple and professional. It has enough color and visual recognition tools to help you locate specific things quickly and find what you are looking for without creating distractions and taking away from the content. The search portion is big and centered on the top of the homepage so it is easy to type in and find exactly what you need right off the home page.

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