Gil Lowrey- 10/7/12
Overview:
Proteacher.net is another resource site teachers can use to get ideas for lesson plans. You can search individual subjects or specific grades. There is also a chat section to chat with other teachers and a group's section to keep fellow teachers in the loop of your findings.
Content:
The content is extensive; it covers several subjects and grades K-8. You can also find specific standards and activities relating to those standards.
Design:
The design is poor. It is a little complex to navigate at first, but once you figure it out it becomes easier. This can be tricky and obviously everyone has his or her own learning curve. There is also a large portion of the site given to advertising which seems to take away from the sites validity at first, but when you remember this is simply a site to help find more resources it seems to not matter.
Morgan Kuchta
September 1, 2010
Blackboard.com
Overview
Blackboard (Bb) is a company with a website (Blackboard.com) that is similar to eCompanion used here on the UW campus. It provides an online domain for teachers to post assignments, announcements, proctor tests, host chats and discussions, and post grades. It is an interactive site for teachers and students to communicate and use as a resource. Bb is obviously aimed at the education audience and has different tools for everything from kindergarten to college. I have used Bb in the past in high school and it was always a very effective tool. It was dependable and very user friendly. I would highly recommend this site to all educators wishing to use an online forum.
Content Summary
At first look, Blackboard is an extremely well organized website, it gives its purpose on the home page and all major pages for the site have tabs clearly labeled at the top. The author information is not available, however blackboard is a company that provides an online forum for teachers and schools to use as a means of communicating with their students and promoting online learning, so it more than likely has more than one author. There is an email address for any support that you need and they also have a frequently asked questions section, broken down by the type of client you might be, i.e. teacher, student, designer, or administrator so you are likely to get your question answered right then and there. The site is very up to date and claims to be adding new features about once every few months so it stays current. The Information quality of this site is great, it is obviously a business and their purpose is clearly stated and easy to understand. It has links to all their concurrent sites that have other tools you can use to make Blackboard more accessible to you and your students i.e. Bb Mobile.
Design
I had no trouble downloading the home page. Although it is not full of bright colors its appeal states its purpose: efficie
Overview: The intended audience for this site is current special education teachers. The purpose of the site is to provide resources such as chat rooms, lesson plans, and join mailing lists. The site offers resources for the classroom as well as offers the chance to talk to other teachers within the special education field. The site also offers a wide range of various links to other sites about special education.
Content:
This website is also designed for all kinds of homework help in numerous subjects. They have different kinds of references, tutoring, and levels, although it looks mainly for upper level (high school and college) students, so for elementary children would find some difficulty using. I do feel like there is quite a bit of ad space taking up pages, so visually it becomes overwhelming.
Design:
The design of this website is good overall, because it looks organized and clear. It is easy for students to look up what they need research on, but any free space given is taken up by ads. I think that getting rid of all these advertisements would sure make this website more efficient in providing a positive and productive learning environment.
Attributes:
The purpose of this site is to help student's understand what they are bringing home for homework and research. It's a supplement to the textbooks they have and available information student's need. I don't think I would send my student's to this website because there are too many distractions, and it seems like they would get lost in the ample of available information. It's also hard to have online instruction because message boards and chat rooms become off topic without someone there regulating what goes on in those environments.
Oct. 7th 2012
Overview:
This site is focused on free K-5 curriculum. Based on the content and design it is obviously intended for a teachers use. There are a boatload of resources on this site for teachers to use in their classrooms and incorporate into their curriculum. The site includes lesson plans, activites, games, and planning tools available to teachers.
Content:
The site is pretty restricted if you do not have an account. For the sake of this review I got a free account. The site is broke up into categories and even includes a teachers chat room. The main focus of this website is to offer tons of planning resources to teachers across the globe in all subjects grade levels K-5.
Design:
The design of this site is less flashy than the others I have reviewed, but that fits the audience. The site is straightforward, loads fast, and is not cluttered. It is also very easy to navigate. The site is also broken up into Classroom, Homeschool, and After School categories.
Amy Andreen
9-14-11
Overview: thwt.org is intended for the use of History and Social Studies Educators. It is a great resource for finding ways to incorporate technology and the various content areas in the classroom. There are various links to other sites as well as links to other pages within the site that would help Social Studies Teachers to devise lesson plans that incorporate technology. This site can also be used to help brainstorm for project assignments to use in the classroom. There are explanations as to why it is important to include certain aspects of technology in the classroom and what ways we as educators can utilize the resources we have.
Content: The content on this site ranges from external sites for historical information to internal resources within the site to help in teaching with technology in the content area of history. There are videos, podcast, articles, chats, and many different ideas about how we can bring all the technology around us into a content area that many student find boring.
Design: thwt.org has a very "sleek" design. It is very simple as far as design goes, but so easy to navigate. It was easy to find the tabs that I wanted. Also, the color scheme used wasn't overwhelming and made it even easier to travel around the site. The contacts page was so easy to find and very accessible with questions.
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