Group items tagged

Content: The content of this website focuses on earth sciences, particularly that of geography and is highly informational. The information given about the author of this site shows that he is highly qualified as well as the many awards given to this site shows that the site is one that is accurate and well kept. The information given requires some previous knowledge, but also most of the topics are well written and students can easily understand what the page is telling them. The site also goes in a predetermined order if you continue to click the "continue along site track" button. Some of the pages seem irrelevant, but as you continue, you understand why those topics were covered. There are some links to other pages but they take time to load but add information to what is being taught. Design: The design of this site is appealing on the first page, but it does not continue throughout the site. The home page catches your attention and so do some of the other pages, but not all of the pages have something for the students to look at and there are a lot of ads in the middle of the pages so students could get confused about what is part of the page and what is not. However, all of the pages have at least one reference photo for students to look at and be able to somewhat understand what the page will be about before they read the text. There are links to live cameras as well which adds to the appeal of the site. This site is also very easy to navigate as explained in the content evaluation and even if you want to deter off the provided course it is easy to find what you are searching for. Overview: This site was average to me. The information was really good and I could definitely use this site in the classroom to help explain certain processes that the earth goes through, but I feel that students would get distracted because this site doesn't have very many interactive aspects. There are also ads in this site that look like they belong with the site, but re

Courtney Lovell February 2, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this site is for teachers to have free lesson plan templates. The intended audience is educators teaching grades K-6. Available resources are multiple lesson plans for general subjects in elementary school. I think that this site will be very useful. As a future educator I will use this site to my benefit. Content: The content to this site is great. I am quick to determine the general information of the site and know who the intended audience is. The authors and sponsor are clearly identifiable. There is a contact us tab that is easy to access. The links on this site are working properly and beneficial to the audience. The information quality is fantastic. The site is lacking the revision date information. Design: The website design is also good. The homepage downloads efficiently and is attractive. You can tell where you are immediately while you are on the site. The copyright date is clearly labeled and the table of contents. The site is easy to navigate although there are not directions available for the user. The multimedia use is working properly. This site is definitely worth visiting if you are a elementary teacher.

Melanie Lenhardt ITEC 2360 2/2/2012 Publications and More The purpose of this site is to teach people about special education and the things that go along with it. It has all of the basic information that you need to know about dealing with it as a parent or someone in their life and useful intervention strategies. This site also has different links to satisfy a variety of needs. I would say the intended audience is parents, but is also informative for anyone. I think that overall, this website is very well designed, easy to use, and very useful for my information needs. Content: I would say that most of this website was very well put together, but there were a few things that they could do to make the site a little better. The site didn't really have a specific author/authours to the site that was clearly identified. We don't really know who they are or any information on them, but we do know how to contact the people about the site. Design: The design of this site is also very well, but could also use a little changes to make it better. I didn't find any directions on how to navigate the site. It seemed self-explanatory though, so I'm not sure that it is necessary to have one or not. I also think that the website could use more videos and images to present information on special education and the things that go along with it. There is not a last revised portion that I saw on the website, the only thing I saw was the copyright date. Last revised is important, and could definitely use that on the site.

Overview: The Constitution.org site has many purposes, including business, information, news, and finally persuasion. The site is directed towards a more literate and comprehensive audience or a higher level student, especially one holding conservative political views. The site provides links to other sites, including amend-it.org, nullifynow.net, and grand-jury.net, as well as many others. The site also links to basic informational places regarding the Constitution. Overall, the website was not impressive: it was confusing, disorganized, and biased. Content: The website definitely had an agenda, seen through its external links, advertisements, and some of the news articles provided. Unfortunately, the bias is not easy to discern. Some of the informational links are exactly that-informational, but often times difficult to comprehend due to some of the higher level subjects. There are blogs one can access, but there are not many interactive parts to the site. Design: The overall design of the site was poor. There were no organized labels for the different sections of information-ie Constitution, Economics, and so on. It was hard to maneuver easily. Many parts of the site did not look similar at all and it was hard to figure out what one was supposed to get from it. The links to the outside are easy to find. Finally, there were few graphics to make the site visually appealing. It was not pretty.

Whitney Reese Reviewed: 2/4/12 Overview: The purpose of this site is to help children learn different math skills through games and word problems. The intended audience is school age children from grades 2nd through 5th.  The available resources include several games or "challenges". Each challenge has informational hints and fun facts to go along with it to help the user figure out the problem. I think this site has good resources for helping children learn a wide variety of math concepts. However it doesn't seem as kid friendly as other sites and may be hard for kids to understand how to navigate the site.  Content: This site has several useful tabs for navigation. The website has clear and credible authors and the information seems fairly up to date.  The challenges and games make learning math fun for children and demonstrate how math is used in everyday life and why these skills are important. It even includes a tab that changes the content of the site from English to Spanish.  Design: The design of this website makes it fairly easy for kids to navigate. They may get confused at first because the intention of the site is to keep you on a certain challenge until you have figured out the answer and chosen a new challenge. However, once the kids are able to understand how to navigate this site it should be no problem for them. There is a lot of text on this site that may seem boring for some kids. The graphics are fun and colorful. This website is clear and organized fairly well.

This site is intended to help families outside of school enjoy math by solving everyday problems, but may also be used at school. The material is at a middle school grade level. There are multiple challenge problems and for each problem the website gives hints, complete solutions, additional related problems etc. This website was developed by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics. So there is a lot of valuable information. I like how the challenge problems are unique and different than your everyday practice problems. Although, there was one major problem with the site. It was very confusing and hard to navigate through. There was not a clear indication on the home page of what the purpose of the website was and how to find the information. There were silly animations that had nothing to do with the math and distracted the eye. The set up was not appealing or well organized. Once I figured out how the website was set up I enjoyed the content, but they should have instructions or a table of contents on the home page. I would definitely like to use this website in my classroom and even with my family once I have older kids, but I would hope the authors improve the navigation system for future newcomers

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.

Paige Hanewald 10/21/13 Overall: The purpose of this site is to expand the vocabulary for all ages between middle school students and adults. This site contains not only an accurate dictionary, but competitive and interactive assessments of vocabulary knowledge, specific vocabulary lists, and interesting blogs that pertain to the use of strange words, their origins, and other relating topics. Overall, I think this site could potentially be useful to anyone who wants to expand their vocabulary knowledge, especially students. Content: The content has several organized features that offer what I had mentioned before: dictionary definitions, vocabulary lists and blogs that are updated frequently, and "quizzes". The website adapts the words according to your increasing level of vocabulary proficiency so you are always challenged. Contributors of the blogs are employees of Thinkmap, the sponsor of the website, and usually include a short biography expressing their qualifications to the site. Design: The design of the website makes it easy to navigate. There are tabs for every feature, including contact information. The links to other pages are helpful and engaging and have no issues.

This site's audience includes ages 13-100 but it is focused more towards middle school to high school ages. There are plenty of different level of math curriculum from addition to calculus. This site includes games, practice problems, pictures etc. The website definitely catches the eye but I'm not sure if I would count that as appealing. It is very jammed packed with a ton of links for different material. Also the color scheme doesn't seem to serve a purpose but to seem like an arcade. This was the first of my three websites to have a lot of information about the authors which was a good thing. Most of the games were educational and served a purpose but I did find some games that didn't even seem to be mathematics based. The website was organized for the most part, but I feel that there was too much and too many links to choose from, especially from the home page. There needed to be more categories, or less material. Overall, I think this website would help prove to students that math can be fun. I would use it in my classroom.

Monique Koller Jan. 24 2010 Cool math games is a website that has games, lessons and interactive ways to learn to enjoy Math. Content: The site has some fun games that I can see the educational value in, but not all of them, nor do I see where Math is a part of all of them. For the most part it seems like a worthwhile site I would allow my kids and maybe students to play on. Design: It looks like a fun site from the get go and I enjoyed exploring it. It is pretty easy to navigate around. There are some good lessons and the games are pretty amusing. I could easily find most of the stuff I needed. Overview: The purpose of this site is to be an aid while a student is learning math. This site is definitely directed towards kids. The authors are also hoping that there is adult supervision so that the kids can interact and get help. The games are good most of the time and have good content I think this could be a valuable site to visit.

Purpose The purpose of Cool Math Games is to help integrate math into a more fun environment. This site is geared for young grade school kids. There are different games that are aimed at tackling different types of skills that are needed in math. There are also different lessons that specialize on other skills. These are targeted at a much higher audience, with lessons like algebra and pre-calculus. This site has a lot of good information that could be used, I am just not sure if it is very helpful to students. Content This site contains a ton of materials. It has games and activities for such a wide range of math skills. The entire site seems to be working, however, it doesn't seem like it all is up to date as it could or should be. The games have good skills to be learned, but they are not up to date with as good of programming as possible. It is also not always apparent who the game or activity is accredited to. It is also not too accessible to contact them with as much ease as I would like. Design The design of the page seems to be a little crammed. They have a lot of link and titles, however, it is not done so in a way that is too pleasing. The color scheme is also very scattered and does not seem to blend well together. The pictures also do not seem to add as much to the page as needed. There also seems to be little order to how the games and activities are put up. This site has a great plan, I do not however feel like they completely got it all correct.

This site is used for elementary students to learn and expand their understanding of math in a more fun way than just the textbook. The intended audience is upper elementary students because a teacher can pick a game that will enforce what they have learned, but it will challenge them to think a little bit harder than they might have doing a word problem. The children also don't see this as boring learning; they see it as a fun game. There are various math games that are specifically targeted for a certain math levels throughout the website. For example, there are games for the upper elementary to work on multiplication, fractions, percentages, and negative numbers. Based on the first two questions that the evaluation for content asks, the answers are: yes, I can identify the purpose of the site, and no, the age group is not explicitly stated, but the intention and vernacular leads us to believe that age of the intended audience. At the bottom of the page it is easy to identify who the creators of this website are and how you can be in contact with them. If the sponsors are the advertisers, then they have clear demonstration of their sponsorship in four distinct locations. We can know that his site was last updated in 2015. We don't know how often it is updated, but we know that everything works according to plan. We know that the intentions of this site is to be a fun learning experience that is organized in a way that children can easily locate anything that they may possibly need. Everything on this site looks professional, but it still appeals to a younger audience. This website provides great opportunities for children to grow in their learning of math as well as play fun games. Everything in terms of logistics measures up to what it should be. The design of the overall lay out is kid friendly, and functions properly as long as the updated version of the flash drive is installed. They have specific animations and sounds that correspond with certain games

Emily Phillips 8/31/2010 Overview: The purpose of this site is for a quick and easy way to solve simple math problems that only involve numbers, not concepts. The intended audiences are math students in lower levels of math. No available resources are provided. This site is basically a calculator with many functions, but can't do all of the functions that a more advanced graphing calculator can. While the site was easy to navigate, moving advertisements and pictures are distracting to the user. Content: A user can easily tell if this site will help their needs however in order to have full access to the site (i.e. the ability to see the steps to get the answer to the entered equation) they must be a member of the site. The information is accurate but since the answers are computer generated, once the user enters into calculus equations, they should be careful to check their answers with other sources because there is a chance that the answer could be one that is not the appropriate answer. There are no links to other sites that might be helpful or related to the subject. Design: The design was good and easy to navigate and follow. The pages within the site come up fairly quickly and the designs of each page are consistent. Some of the graphics contribute to the site but the advertisements definitely take away attention to the site.

Abbey Robbins-Lilley 5 September 2010 Language Arts Sites Website Evaluation Overview This site is called Language Arts Sites. It has links for things such as children's literature. There are not any obvious resources or listed authors of the site. There is, however, a big button to click to buy books from Amazon.com. I don't think kids would be very interested in this site, as it is complicated to navigate after clicking on one of the provided links. Content There are several links to several aspects in language arts for children. It looks like a simple, easy-to-navigate site, but once you click on a link, you are brought to a chaotic mess of other information, plus you have to spend money to go further on to some sites you may want to go to. Design The site looks like it was either cheaply made, or made several years ago. It is definitely not as appealing as other sites designed for children. There are two random images that are not used for buttons, which are right next to a button used to go to Amazon.com. The rest of the site is boring to look at, and the links bring you to overwhelming sites filled with pages of writing in small font, things to buy to go to other links, and not very fun pictures here and there.

Overview: This website is for kids to be able to get online and learn about certain subjects though interactive games. Content: The content of this website is directed more towards elementary school students. The appropriate ages for games vary, they don't specify by grade level so it is just a trial and error type of site. There are different subjects that students can learn from such as the human body, identifying rocks, and they can even watch educational movies. Design: The colors used in this site are definitely geared towards elementary level kids. It's slightly hard to maneuver around for younger kids, there are many different links you can click on that take you to the same spot they just all have different names, which can be confusing.

Colter Huhn 1-24-10 The purpose of this site is to be a resource for science, specifically biology, teachers. The site contains quizzes, worksheets, lessons, labs, and information on biology. The intended audience is science teachers across the country. My overall impression is fairly strong with this website. The content is great and could be very helpful for a biology teacher. The design is simple, but well put together and easy to navigate. As far as content goes, there are many strengths, and definitely some weaknesses. Upon first look the basic content and intended audience is clearly stated in the opening paragraph on the home page. Also, the information quality is excellent. It's well organized, easy to understand, seemingly accurate, and most importantly does a flawless job of fulfilling the sites purpose in helping science teachers. The major flaw I did find was the information providers and currency. There were no authors or references sited anywhere. Given, most of the links were to worksheets, labs, etc. but an author or creator should be listed somewhere. The only way of finding out who the author of the site is, was to email him/her. Now to the web design itself which was nearly perfect. The site was fast and usable on at least Firefox and Internet Explorer. The homepage was attractive and well organized. The site itself was very easy to navigate with directions in the opening paragraph. There were clear categories to content and helpful links for further information. Finally the content presentation itself was perfect. It's easy to use, organized, same format throughout, and sufficient information. The flaws seem to be there was no date of last revision, and a copyright and site sponsor were nowhere to be found.

Good resource for lesson plans, labs, worksheets, quizzes, etc.. for Biology and Science teachers.

Justin Sanchez Reviewed 10-21-13 www.biologycorner.com Purpose: The purpose of this website is to provide biology related teaching material. There are quizzes, worksheets, and other teaching material tools. Intended audience: The intended audience is teachers who are looking for education material. Available resources: There are many links to other education material websites. Overview: This is a really good website for teachers. There is a ton of different educational material. This website is also creative commons. The website seems to be well maintained and easy to download. Moving from link to link is very fast and easy. Content: All of the content seems to high school biology related. The content is mostly targeted towards teachers through education material. Design: The website downloads fast. The site is not too busy. The site seems to be well maintained, there is not broken links or under construction pages. All of the links are obvious as to where they will take you.