Morgan Jenkins
October 13, 2014
The author of this website wanted to help teachers find resources and lesson plans more easily. This website provides many different resources for preschool and kindergarten planning. It has lesson plans, activities, worksheets, math, and crafts. I personally feel that this site is helpful in many ways because it has a large variety of ideas and lessons. You can find specific lessons for holidays or seasons, but it still has generic lesson plans that can be modified for a specific class.
The author of this website, Elaine Engerdahl, is a credible author because she taught Kindergarten for 31 years, therefore an expert by experience. The last copyright was in 2013. I would consider the materials up to date because the lessons all follow common core standards and include up to date technology and methods. There was a contact section that included the email and mailing address of the author along with a phone number. The content is clear and effective because the purpose was to help provide teachers with resources and the site effectively does that. My overall impression of this website was professional and helpful.
This website was easy to navigate and had a clean design. There were buttons for lesson plans, activities, crafts and more. When you would click on the links to other websites they seemed to all work. The design of the simple but fun. There were graphics but not too many. The text was easy to read, and the font was not too big or small. Clearly the website was set up well and is easy to use.
This site is probably not a site that I would use, by looking at the title this looks like a fantastic website to use to teach about the culture of the Grapes of Wrath. By looking a little closer the title may say read me, but the articles following say "I am off topic". There is no clearly identified audience, the website jumps around a lot. One link the class would be looking at Oklahoma culture and the next link you are the University of Oklahoma's home page. There is not an identified purpose for this url. I think this was a very mediocre site.
I was not easily able to find identify the audience nor the purpose of this site. This was a reliable site, the author and copyright date were easily accessible, this was also a university site. This URL might have been made by a student. This website was last updated in 2007, therefore this would put up a red flag because the author hasn't made any changes to it for 7 years. It seems a little outdated. All of the links to other sites are working properly, although the only other link is to the university home page. This site is not accurate, it has no related topics to other sites that I went to. Nor does it have information related to my topic. The information in this site is not organized nor is it easy to understand. There are no spelling or grammar issues, although a bias opinion is easily detectable. The links are what kills this site. There is no need to have a link to your University search page on one of the main links on your webpage.
The design in this website is one positive thing about this site, the home page downloads successfully and with no problems. The home page is aesthetically pleasing and draws the audience in. The title is very catchy and serves as a learning experience. The copyright date is easily accessible, although outdated. There is a table of contents although they all run together, all of the links seem to be the same. Navigation throughout this site does not go smoot
John Ripley
9/12/11
Khan Academy
Overview: This website is intended to provide a free, high quality educational experience for anyone interested in the material presented on the website. Based on my content and design evaluations I would say that this site achieves it's objective and is a useful educational tool. Because of the seriousness, for lack of a better word, of the layout it is probably more suitable for people in middle school and up.
Content: The content covers math and science topics extremely well while the social studies fields are a little sparse. I focused on the math content and it was excellent, covering about every imaginable topic. The videos were easy to follow and informative and the practice problems were pertinent to the lessons shown in the videos.
Design: The design of the website is straightforward and direct. It is easy to navigate and find exactly what you want. As I mentioned above, the design is fairly serious and I would think that elementary age students might prefer something a little more catchy and flashy. However, for a little older audience I think that the design is very good.
Teachers and Parents' Resources This website is basically for parents and teachers trying to help their kids study English. You will find a guide to the materials you need in the TEACHERS and PARENTS section of the site. Sine these resources have been prepared by ESL professionals with at least 5 years teaching experience, you will find this site a great help.
Allyson Boyer
Review date 2/2/12
This website is intended for mostly teachers, but parents could also benefit from this site. It is designed for teachers and parents to find fun arts and craft ideas, as well as educational worksheets. The purpose of this site is for teachers to find free, and fun activates for their students to enjoy. There are plenty of subject areas for educators to explore and find ideas to use in their classrooms. I enjoyed this website because it reminded me of when I was in elementary school and teachers would have fun worksheets for different holidays. We still were learning, but it made more interesting having a light hearted worksheet. There is no specific author for this site, there is a section where people can write reviews and all of them were positive, so it seems to be a good resource for educators and parents.
When I was looking over the content of this website I found that most of my evaluations were positive. I did find however, that I did not like the fact that there was no information about the author. I would have liked to be able to read a bit about the author and their views or opinions on the information that they had provided. I also found that there was not a lot of interactivity to increase the value of this website. It would have been nice to be able to experiment a little with the worksheets and pictures, instead of just printing them out. Overall, the rest of the site looked sophisticated and contained good information. The links all worked, the grammar and spelling seemed to be correct, and there was a link to contact the provider of the website. I enjoyed the variety of the worksheets for different subject areas and feel that will be very helpful in the future for my career.
When I first navigated to this site I found that it was not very eye catching. I looked over it carefully to realize that the information would be useful. As I browsed through the website I found that there were not many graphics through
Museum of Web Art is a site intended to give the public an alternative experience to viewing art. However this site is inadequate because it becomes a maze of links in which all roads dead-end to unavailable images. There is no immediate knowledge of the sponsor or of review dates. The site itself seems to be an abandoned ship, a "ghost-site" if you will. This site comes off as unreliable and inaccurate. I suggest staying away from this site and go visit a local gallery or museum instead. It'll be a lot less confusing and you'll actually become exposed to art.
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
The Upshot appears in the NYTimes website. Claire C. Miller writes about the rift between women/girls and science and mathematics. The audience for this article is aimed at elementary teachers. It states that biases can unintentionally affect young women into believing that their math skills are below average or not expected. Historically, science breakthroughs and mathematical theories have been postulated by predominately men. Young women are said to not be encouraged to pursue mathematics and science as a career from a young age. Statistically, Information Technology companies hire upwards of 80% of their workforce from males. Women are severely unrepresented.
The article ignores past cultural norms that perpetuated this stigma, yet focuses on encouragement to help lead young women into science and technology. The article places most of the effective encouragement on the teacher, not the parents. The article sites a study from 2002 where teachers graded anonymous papers and the results were such that the girls outscored the boys. When the identities were known by the grader, the results favored the males.
I would like to understand more on this experiment. While I agree that young women should be encouraged to enter the math and science world, I am not convinced that grading favors males. The article brings up some good areas of focus and I agree that encouragement is important.
Hailey Dungan
April 15, 2015
The intended audience of this article is the critical readers of Shakespeare, individuals who are skeptical that Shakespeare even existed. The purpose of the piece is to highlight the possibility of his nonexistence. It works to disprove this theory, and proposes instead a multitude of flaws in Shakespeare's career. The article was written in 2014 by Robert Gore-Langton. There has been no updates to the piece as of recently. The site itself is clean, Newsweek being a reputable source provides us with a link that brings us to other articles written by the author. This is just one of the links which make this site easy to use and well designed. I am hesitant to use this site as one that is educational. The article provides food for thought and would be an interesting debate topic to approach in an educational setting.
The basic content of this site is stated in the name. Newsweek works to inform individuals of the news as well as other information. The audience is adults, or individuals interested in the daily events of the world. The author of this article is stated from the main page. Though there is little information about the author, there is a link which sends you to a page with a collection of his other writings. There is no indicator that this article has been recently updated but the content is clear. The site is informative, tagging subjects to expand your reading experience. Again, I would use this in class to guide discussion, but would not rely solely on this piece.
The website is designed well. It provides you with search options in case one were to look for additional information. It is eye catching, the big red letters of Newsweek drawing you in. The links are in working order, and they are well organized. There is no date for the sites last revision, and there may be some out of date information present as the site is a collection of news and information. However I would say that this site is well designed, it
Overview: The website PrimaryGames.com is an all purpose website for elementary and middle school aged children. The purpose of this website is to help children understand math, science, social studies, and language arts in a fun way. The website offers many different types of games and puzzles, along with games to further the education of elementary and middle school aged children.
Content: The content of the website PrimaryGames.com is very clear. This website is fully completed and is used effectively with a well organized home screen that is easy to understand and helps the child or the teacher find different types of games or subject areas without any problems. The website FunBrain.com would be a great tool for teachers or parents to use in the classroom or in the home setting. The website PrimaryGames.com can further the math, science, social studies, and language arts skills of the grades K-8 and the children can have a great time in using this website as well.
Design: The website PrimaryGames.com is a well designed website with many different colors that grab your attention. This website also has a tool that can be used to find the desired subject areas that the teacher or parent can use with their children. The website does have a few ads that can distract the eye to look at the ads instead of looking at what the website has to offer and at times can be a little too busy for children and they might get distracted. This website also offers a teachers section that offers many different tools like print zone of different activities and worksheets. Overall this website can be a great tool to use in the future.
Ben Lebeda primarygames.com 9/14/11
Overview:
My impression of this site is that it is more focused more on games and advertising than on education. It did have different sections dedicated to different subjects, but the games were way easier to access than the educational content, which turned out to be only made up of educational games. This website was clearly designed for young users and not ideally suited for use in a classroom.
Content:
The basic content of this site was indeed easy to determine, as it was predominantly games, which means that the intended audience is students. The site seemed to be a collection of games, some of which could be educational. It was unclear what exactly the purpose of this site was, as it consisted mainly of games. There were much more non-educational games available on this site than educational games, which is obviously not a good thing when looking at potential websites for in class use.
Design:
This website certainly was an attention-getter, with all the bright colors and advertisements for games. There was a navigation bar on the top of the website, but all the pages appeared to be the same, as every page had games on it. There were also numerous advertisements, which at times were distracting and made the website very colorful and flashy. It was also a little unclear as to how often the site was updated.
Overview: this website provides different visual aids for several different subjects. It seems to be age appropriate for my elementary aged students. There are games and videos which would help support what I am teaching and I think the students would enjoy them.
Content: This website contains many subjects such as science, social studies, math and many more. It is very bright and makes learning fun for the kids. It would be a great tool to use in the classroom to support what the students are learning. It could also be a useful learning tool at home. The website is perfect for elementary aged students it is easily navigated and easy to use.
Design: The website is very well designed. The subjects are clearly separated and would be easy for students to choose what they want or need to look at. I feel it would be a great tool for my classroom in the future.
Overview
This is another good site to send home with parents. It is simplistic and easy to use without too many hassles. It also has many games that children can enjoy playing. It is appropriate for many grade levels so it will transfer well to different classrooms and students. The variety of games give students many options.
Content
The content is nicely organized and easy to see as well as to decide what to do. The content is appropriate for all most elementary student and have a way to review. There is a variety of different games for students to play that use math in different creative ways.
Design
The design of this site is wonderful. They use colors to highlight sections and show different ideas. All of the colors are bright and stand out very nicely. The site is well organized offering many different categories for games. The games are not sorted by grade level of idea but they are easy to find because there isn't tons of games to sort through. The level of the games vary and most seem appropriate for students to play. The bright colors continue throughout the site.
-Overview: This website is very visually appealing and child friendly. There are lots of colors and graphics on the homepage and lots of different things that children would be excited to click on and see. The website is mainly made for children to play educational computer games and learn new things. It is centered on primary grade levels and their educational experiences. There are different resources for children to learn new things and the backgrounds are based on the seasons and holidays.
-Content: On this website there is a ton of different games under each subcategory and has various types of games under each subject. They are all tailored to primary level children and are easy for them to play and learn. There are things for the students to print out and various puzzles and other games that the students can access on this website. I am not sure of the content of all the games if they are all educational, but just having the matching and certain aspects of not academic games is still important for a child's development.
-Design: This website has a lot of colors, large print, and pictures. It is tailored for young children so they are able to navigate the page on their own and can learn to recognize the colors and words. The website divides the games up by subject and then lists them after you click on the subject which is good so that parents and teachers can help the students focus on things that they need to work on even if it is through a game like this. It also makes it easy for teachers and parents to see the different things that are offered to the child to play and it is good for the child to learn to recognize and read these words. They all have pictures or clip art with them so that even if the child cannot read the word they can tell what it is by looking at the pictures.
Scott Chanthongthip January 25, 2009
Overview:
The site offered interesting facts about sea turtles, but the majority of the organizational site purpose was to raise sea turtle awareness for conservation efforts. As a teacher, it may be useful to refer to the site for simple informational tidbits, but it is not a primary source for all turtle research. The site offers species only secluded to the Caribbean eco-system. Information on efforts to support the conservation of sea turtles helps website viewers get involved. People can volunteer, adopt a turtle, or donate money to sea turtle conservation.
Content:
Information offered on this site can be useful to teachers and their students. Easy to navigate the site has many interactive tools like the turtle tracking map, where one can pick a turtle and see where s/he has traveled. Tracking gives Information about the migration of the turtles often and updates site viewers about sea turtle behaviors. CCC is the longest .org website of its kind that lends its attention to turtle conservation. Dr. Archie Carr was the founder of the CCC and research efforts have accumulated almost 50 years of experience. Many of the people that edit this site and review it are turtle researchers giving it a credible source for information, but it also leans towards conservation efforts as its premise. Conservation may be the sites main priority, but lesson plans for teachers with available turtle modules for students to learn are helpful. I do not know if the website charges for the downloadable PDF files for teachers, but one must register to gain access to the teaching modules. The sites message is clear, so it provides multiple ways to contribute to the funds for seas turtle conservation. The site gave me the necessary tidbits that help me learn more about turtles, yet not a good place to start to teach about turtles. I would recommend this site more for making learning about turtles more interesting and possibly integrat
Sara Hindman
January 24, 2010
Overview
Coolmath4kids.com is website designed for those who are frustrated with math and are tired of the way it has been taught. The purpose of this website is solely to educate students about the different areas of math. This website provides lessons, practice worksheets, and games on things as simple as addition and subtraction to pre-algebra. The content of this website is good and accurate while the website has too much design. The intended audience is for all grade levels. I think this website is a great resource for those who are having trouble on their math homework, but I do not think I would use this website in the classroom.
Content
At a first look, it is easy to see that the purpose behind coolmath4kids.com is to educate anyone and everyone about some of the different areas of math. Unlike nobelprize.org and kids.discovery.com, coolmath4kids.com has an author and provides a lot of information about them. The author's name is Karen and claims to have a B.A. and a M.S. in mathematics and have 14 years of experience teaching math at the community college level. I find "Karen's" introduction of herself unprofessional, although this is a website for students, not adults. The latest revision of this website was in 2009, the content is frequent, and all the information quality is great. Also unlike the previous websites, coolmath4kids.com has links to other websites; such as, coolmath-games.com, financeFREAK.com, and sciencemonster.com. These websites were created by Karen, but there are no other additional websites outside of Karen's websites.
Design
Coolmath4kids.com design is bright and colorful and instantly gives headaches. There are many neon colors, flashy multimedia, and different size font on every page. The speed is a little slow, but that may be my computer or all the animated stuff on the website. The homepage has a clear table of content and you can easily navigate to wherever area of math n
Overview: This website is aimed for elementary students who want to work on multiple math concepts. The website's last update or copyright was in 2009. I feel that this website is too busy with color and somewhat hard to navigate because there are too many steps to take to get there. There's also unnecessary advertisements and the cursor is a bit annoying when trying to click on places. I do like the fact the the author has a page about her so that people know who they are working with and she gives background information as to why she has this website.
Content: I feel that there are too many steps and questioning examples for the students to do on their own. Even when you go into a game it only does the right answer sometimes. What it does have it going for it is that there are multiple different categories that the students can pick and work on.
Design: I feel that the website has the right idea to help appeal students to go into their website but I also feel that it takes too long to get where they want to go. They do have helpful hints and the student can choose whether or not they would like to go faster or slower with the problems. I think that if it didnt have as many colors or different things coming at you then this website would be a lot more effective.
Rachel Keyes
ITEC 2360
01/24/11
Good site
http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3070
Overview
Scholastic is a well-known company to me because my grade school worked with scholastic; this gives the sight some extra credibility. It appears to be well organized and geared towards teachers that are interested in finding out more about literature circles and how to use them in their classrooms. The purpose of the site is to educate teachers.
Content
The content is an article written by a teacher who has used the literature circle in her classroom, and her experience with it. She includes an assessment sheet to go with the circle, and how to grade the students. At the end of the article she includes references and other articles with more information. The content is easy to navigate and to understand. There is a link that gives you a biography of the author; she is a teacher and a very credible source.
Design
There are ads for book clubs, school supply lists, and essay contests for students. There are links that provide more information about the topic. The site was updated at the beginning of 2011. The information was well organized and clear, and easy to access. All of the links are functional and provide good information.
Haley Brown
1/19/2011
Overview: The purpose of this website is to sell science supplies.
Content: Each item for sale is advertised extremely well. When you click on the link there is a video that shows you how to use the item as well as information on what the item is. It looks like the site is updated practically every day.
Design: This website is organized very cleanly. All items are organized by categories on one side, the items in the middle, and ads on the other.
Kids.gov
Michelle Petty, January 22, 2011
Overview: This website is aimed at students, ages K-8, and educators. For educators, it offers a wide range of information on topics from science, math, social studies, and health. It then access sites that are relevant to the topic selected and gives links to other sites on a variety of topics within each broad category. For students, it offers them a similar experience. They can go to social studies, and then pick current events, maps, natural history, U.S. studies and world studies depending on what they're studying. This site is great because it offers a variety of information under every category. It is easy to navigate and has very reliable and dependable sources to back its information.
Content: The site is very easy to navigate; the top has tabs for students' breaking it down for grades k-5, grades 6-8, and educators. At the bottom of the homepage there is a link to an about us which gives information on the site, who maintains it and who provides the information. The Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC) out of Pueblo, Colorado, maintains this site and if that weren't enough information it gives a link to the Pueblo site. This site is mainly links to other educational pages, but it is easy to understand and use. It is aimed at all educational branches, and provides educational sites as well as fun game sites. I would use this site in a classroom setting, because it is educational and easy to use.
Design: The design of this website is pretty straightforward. It is basic which makes it easy for all ages to use, and all of the links lead to the site promised without advertisements popping up. There isn't a table of content, but it is broken down into such specific categories, that a table of contents is not necessary. The date of last revision is found on the about us tab and is clearly labeled along with who maintains the site and how to contact them. A simple, yet effective site that
Overview: This site offers all kinds of learning for kids from reading.math,writing to health and fun games to help you learn. You learn about art, music and even money. It is a great learning tool for all kids to have access to.
Content: The site has many different links that you can visit but organizes them in groups so it is easier to navigate. This site provides all kinds of useful information for kids and educators. Kids can play fun and interactive games for fun learning on all kinds of topics. They can also learn about everday matters like healthy habits. The author is well recognized on the site as well as sponsor. The information is shown in a way that kids can comphrend the material.
Design: The homepage is colorful and has pictures. It keeps you interested in learning with its fun graphics. Every link was well laid out and could be found easily for kids. It is frequently revised so the information is up to date.
Emily Hastings
Reviewed 2/5/12
Kids.gov
Purpose:
The purpose of this website is to provide students with links to other educational and governmental websites for kids.
Intended Audience:
This site is intended for Kindergarten through eighth grade.
Available Resources:
This site has many resources available. That is what the purpose of this site is, to link you to other useful and educational websites.
Overall Review:
This website is easy to use, making it worthwhile. The information is presented clearly and simply making it easy to navigate from one link to the other. It also includes a navigation bar and a site map which are both very useful. The links have great information and do not take long to get to. There are no dead ends, and they bring you to what they say they will. This website is a great resource for finding educational sites.
Overview:
This site has a link for k-5, 6-8, and teachers with endless links to educational sites. It is extremely organized and very helpful when looking for sites.
Content:
The content of this site is for students in need of educational websites. It is a great resource for that purpose. When clicked on, the link opens quickly and the information is accurate and educational. It has many links for websites of all different subjects.
Design:
The design of this website isn't very eye catching, but is welcoming because it is so simple to use. You don't need directions on how to use the site. It is very organized and makes looking for these links easy. It provides you with a site map which is a list of everything in the site, which is very useful as well.
Shelley Limegrover
January 22, 2011
OVERVIEW
The first site I evaluated was physicsclassroom.com. This site is intended for both students and teachers of physics at the high school and early college levels. The site is very comprehensive including everything from curriculum and worksheets to tutorials and simulations. I found this site so helpful and easy to navigate that I imagine I will be returning to it many times in the future.
CONTENT
As noted above, this site is very comprehensive. Information is easy to access including information about the author, who is a graduate of chemical engineering and now a high school physics teacher. The author claims to make frequent edits to the site, thought the dates of last revision are not apparent. As far as I can tell, the information appears up-to-date with current-day physics knowledge. All pages contain complete information and there are no broken links.
DESIGN
This page is very well designed. The author did an excellent job presenting a lot of information in a concise format. The navigation is easy to use and the layout of the pages is consistent. Portions of the site that may be problematic for the user are accompanied by a brief introduction and, when applicable, instructions (such as for the interactive portions of the site). Should any confusion arise, the author's contact information is available.
Ericka Chorniak
October 7, 2012
Overview: The purpose of the Physics Classroom is to provide examples for teachers, as well as ideas for instruction and worksheet opportunities. This site is also a good resource for high school level physics students because it provides practice problems and explanations to answers in addition to physics games for the students to entertain themselves during their free-time. The links available on the site can be used as good resources a wide range of purposes. For example, there are sections on this site that provide guidance for using the site, there are review, explanation, and even ACT sections for the students who are struggling with the content, as well as a section for teacher that will provide ideas for teaching the content and problems to work through. Based on these things and personal experience with the site, my overall impression is that this site is not only worth using, bookmarking and referring to, but also it is worth sharing with others.
Content: The content of this site is easy to determine at first glance and it is easy to determine the intended audience. The authors of the site are clearly identified, their information is available for viewing, and appear to be qualified. The sponsor of the site is also clearly identified and they provide contact information for any questions. This site provides the date it was last revised and it is appropriate for the material. All of the links are current and work properly. The purpose of this site is clearly identifiable as informational and it achieves this purpose effectively. The content appears to be complete, is well organized, is easy to understand, offers sufficient information related to my needs/purposes as a future high school physics teacher, is free of bias, provides interactivity, is accurate, and is consistent with similar information in other sources. The spelling and grammar are correct. The site provides links to other sites (within the site) that are related
Gary Allen Jan 23, 2011.
Overview: As the title suggests, this is a website designed to help kids learn about American history. The site is authored by a man with much experience in presenting history for kids and includes a link to his biography.
Content: This site contains many easy to follow links, a glossary, interesting facts, a search box and even some educational games to help present the content. Also included are links to other sites of similar content and a weekly newsletter. There is no date for the last revision of the site, but there is a link to contact the author and ask questions.
Design: The site is fairly simple in design with the main navigation across the top, another menu of links down the left side, and ads on the right side. The lack of flashy elements helps the site load extremely fast however. Navigation is very straightforward and clearly labelled.
Overview: This website's purpose within in a classroom could be for research papers and projects. Each student could choose their own topic and then navigate the links easily to learn more information with concise bullet points, pictures, correlations to current events, and related games. This website included topics in several areas but primarily history, geography, economics, and government.
Content: This website has a wide variety of upper elementary social studies information including even broader topics of history, geography, government and economics. The home page had a general toolbar that provided information about the site and the creator. On the left side was a huge bar that linked to many specific history topics such as current events, teaching resources, timelines, and maps. Once you have clicked on a topic from the side bar there are even more links to even narrower research areas. This would be a good site to use for students to create a research project about a topic that they are interested in. There was only one link found that was not up-to-date.
Design: The design is not very appealing especially for young children it initially looks a bit bland. Once you have picked a side link and narrowed your topic there are visually appealing pictures and games to go along with the information being taught. The home page took a while to download and had an ad that was generated more towards adults pop-up. The site is easy to navigate following all working links. The website did not work well in Internet explorer but did work well in Google Chrome.
Brianna Gillespie
9/14/11
OVERVIEW:
This website is to teach students about the many different subjects related to social studies. Students can use this website to answer almost any questions they could have about social studies. This website is mainly for older children because it has a lot of reading that may be a little difficult for younger children to comprehend.
CONTENT:
The content includes current events, games, economics, geography, presidents, states, and many more. Within each subject are a variety of links to choose from. Each link is focused on a main point of the subject. There is also a section on the main page titled "This Week in History" with some facts about a certain event that happened in the past.
DESIGN:
The design has some color, but is a little bland. However, each page has a piece of clipart on it, so it is not completely boring. Children would be able to navigate around this website fairly easily too.
Overview- This site is intended for older elementary students and well as 7th and 8th grade students. This site communicates civics in a very exciting way. There are selections and choices to pick from on the opening page. These choices range from categories such as quizzes, independence, the constitution, legislative, executive, and judicial braches and well as elections, and citizenship. Following your selection of the topic of your choice, one is given additional categories to explore. Content- I like this website because it is very simplistic, but very informative for educational purposes. It is clear and detailed. As an elementary or middle school child this type of website would be an excellent way of establishing ones first book report or learning about government. It is very easy to access all areas of the site. Design- The design is very colorful and eye catching.