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Khan Academy is an excellent resource for parents, students, and teachers. It is basically a free online classroom with video lessons and the opportunity to try and solve problems in short online quizzes. It has resources for math, science, economics, and more. The resources are intended for a diverse audience with resources that vary from kindergarten all the way to high school and beyond. Teachers and parents can use it to help their students or children to get extra instruction and practice. Students can use it to help them develop a better understanding and to help them practice or study for tests. The site is well made and the information is credible which makes it an excellent resource. The content is obvious as Khan Academy has a drop down tab that allows you to navigate to all the different subjects and the audience is also obvious as each subject is broken down by which grade you are in. The content specialists are all experienced experts in all sorts of different fields and so the information can be verifiably accurate. Everything is well organized and the information is explained mostly through videos which tend to thoroughly explain the information. The website downloads very quickly and is aesthetically appealing. You can tell that it was professionally made. All of the links work and directions for using the website are fairly straightforward. All the videos and graphics serve a clear purpose which is typically to explain and illustrate different subjects. For example in the Trigonometry section a video is shown which illustrates a right triangle and the different ratios that can be used to solve the sides or angles of the triangle. The website is also extremely current as the copyright date is 2015.

Trevor Montgomery Khan Academy is a resource that students, teachers and parents can all use to encourage and promote positive attitudes and confidence for students in math by using activities that seem like games that actually help students practice and hone their math skills in a seemingly fun learning vessel. Khan Academy is also an extremely great resource for parents and teachers because they can not only track their child or students' progress, but also create activities and lessons for students to do outside of class and have their own online tracking guide. As far as content goes, the activities are based on grade level and category for the students, so as teachers, you have a lot of control as to what the material is. Additionally, you can add students to the class at any point and when necessary, look at the lessons from a "student view", where essentially you are logged in as a student and can take a crack at the lesson yourself to see if there are any errors or misconceptions. This is actually a great tool as a way to, in a sort, "proofread" your lesson or online homework activity assigned. You can also track skill progress specific to each of the students and when a child is done mastering a certain activity, you can keep track of that and maybe quiz them in class as a way of ensuring mastery of the concepts. The intended audience is parents, students and teachers alike. As a personal user and someone who knows they will use this resource as a future teacher, I have to say I give this resource a big thumbs up. So as far as easiness and fluidity of the website goes, it couldn't be easier to navigate. Especially for students, you couldn't ask for a better layout of a resource like this that clearly identifies goals and activities for you. As a teacher, everything is neatly organized in one place for you to navigate back and forth through students and activities.

Overview The purpose of the Birmingham Grid for Learning site about Life Cycles is intended to provide an interactive introduction to the topic of life cycles. Life cycles are a key component in Biology and it is very important that each student understands them. The intended audience for the site is roughly middle school aged science students. My overall impression of the site is that it is very basic, and has a limited amount of information on it. It can be an ok resource at introducing the topic of life cycles, but should not be used in going into great detail of the topic itself. Content The content of this site would be good for younger students in the field of science. It is good for students to use to augment prior learning of life cycles as well as not going into great detail of life cycles. The website is good for younger secondary students due to the fact that it uses interactive lessons on the life cycles of frogs and butterflies. I would personally only use this site on a minimum basis, not more than half of a class period due to the limited information contained within. Design I thought that the design of the website was very useful, as well as easy to navigate. It had clear instructions as well as easy links to follow. It could be used very easily with little to no trouble learning how to navigate it.

Scott Chanthongthip on January 23, 2010 Overview: National Library of Virtual Manipulatives is a free website offered online to help teachers us visual aids to teach mathematics. The content is from the Utah State University and is edited by the university. Content is easy to navigate and understand because it focuses on students from K-12. Content: The National Teachers Council of Mathematics five content standards are listed vertically in a grid, while the grades for each of the standards are listed across the top of the grid. Navigation based on the content standard and grade level appropriateness is accessible because of this organization. Teachers just need to find the content standard and line it up with the appropriate grade level. Although the site has a version that it offers to schools many of the virtual manipulatives are easy to use as long as one's computer has JAVA capabilities. There are four different language options for the different virtual manipulatives, so it makes it easy to use in bilingual settings (English, Spanish, French, and Chinese). The main reason for this website is to offer teachers with computer technology to teach manipulation of different math areas when the physical manipulatives are not available. Teachers can also use the site to help explain concept clarity of hard to understand math functions. Design: The initial web page offers a grid of math standards and grade levels from K-12. Teachers can click on the appropriate link and it will lead them to more options on different subjects in the content areas. None of the links are broken for the virtual manipulatives. Design of the website is updated often by the USU. NLVM also allows users to select from four different languages.

Kaci Philpot Overview: The purpose of this site is to provide teachers and students with fun, interactive Math manipulatives online, because manipulatives help students to see visual relationships in Math and help to actively engage students. The website has the following standards for math education; numbers and operations, algebra, geometry, measurement, and data analysis & probability. Each standard has four different age groups to choose from: pre-k through 2, 3 through 5, 6 through 8, and 9 through 12. This website is one of the very few educational websites I have found that is free and clear or useless information and clutter. Content Summary: This website content quality is very high; it has an index chart on the homepage with grade levels and math standards. Each box on the chart is linked to a page of full of various virtual Math manipulatives. If you navigate to the credits page you can see who is in charge of creating what, however it does not provide information about or credibility of those individuals. It also does not have revision dates. But the site is well organized and has very rich content. The manipulatives are an excellent way to get students excited about learning math. Total yeses: 19 Total no's: 2 Total N/A: 3 Design Summary: The homepage of this site is very easy to navigate and understand, but it does not have very strong eye appeal at all. But the manipulatives are very useful and all have clear directions if necessary and all internal and external links work properly. It does not appear to have any outdated content, if Mathematics can even be outdated. My favorite link on this website is the link to the Spanish page. This would be very useful for teachers with ESL students; it helps to ease the language barrier. Total yeses: 22 Total no's: 2 Total N/A: 0

Chelsey Lynch 1/31/11 * Overview: This website is for the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives. The intended audience of this site is teachers, and students of all ages. The available resources are a wide array of virtual math manipulatives. This website is extremely useful to teachers because it provides children with a firm grasp on concepts by letting them learn directly through physical objects that enable students to visualize relationships and applications. * Design: This website is attractive and very easy to navigate. The main page of the website contains a large grid system which serves as a menu for the math content area and grade level. All information to contact the sites provider is given, and all the information is current. The instructions for the manipulatives are very easy to follow and the site even provides examples when necessary. This site has adequate graphics, though the music and sounds in games is a little dated and sometimes annoying. * Content: The authors of this site appear to be highly education and experts in this field. The purpose of this site is very clear and the content achieves the intended purpose effectively. This site is extremely interactive, well organized, and easy to navigate. I have personally used this site numerous times and love it. The only things I wish this site contained more of are links to websites that are similar to this or had further information.

Overview: The National Geographic website is informational and entertaining it is Is full of startling photography and mind-expanding writing on space, the environment, animals, and even world music. Its purpose is to inform people on interesting news and events along with many entertaining stories and topics. Its intended audience is for anyone and everyone even a link for children. Content: There is so much content and information on this site. On the homepage there are top stories, videos, photos, and polls. There are tabs to photography, environment, travel, adventure, National Geographic TV, kids, and shop. There are also links to the magazine, news, animals, science, video, education, maps, games, music, blogs, movies, in the field, and a site index. When you access the site is easy to determine the content and intended audience. There is available information about the authors and researches for the different articles. The information is always constantly being updated and revised so nothing is out of date. The links also are easy to use and work properly. The information and content presented is not biased and achieves the intended purpose of informing and entertaining Design: The design of the National geographic website is very organized and easy to navigate through its many links of information. It is full of eye-catching photos and colorful links and tabs. It is easy to read and very understandable and accessible. The website downloads efficiently and the site is appealing and grabs tor attention. There is a site index and search box. The sites also provide copyright informational the provider is clearly identified. The links are clear and helpful and all the information including the photos videos and articles serve a clear purpose to the site.

This website is highly recommended in the world of educators. National Geographic is a well-known magazine. The purpose of the site is to make their information more accessible. When looking for an article for a science report this is a good site to go to. The audience for National Geographic is from 5-100; they have articles designed for young children but also sophisticated articles for a more mature audience. Also on this website if you wanted a hard copy of the magazine you could subscribe. My overall impression was very good. The content of the website is easy to maneuver around and find. Because National Geographic is a well-known magazine you know that the information presented is reliable and accurate. The website has access to games and videos to further explore the concepts.  As for design, it scores just as high as content. The homepage is appealing to look at and easy to use. When searching for a topic many articles come up giving many different perspectives one could choose from. The site has many colorful pictures that make your research more appealing to conduct.  Overall this website is very well designed and easy to use. 

New Horizons is an educational site that contains strategies for teachers to enhance and expand their educational curriculum. I chose the Arts in Education page for this review. Content: This website has been around since 1980 and although it is currently retired, it has been the launching platform of many new educational sites. In specific the Arts in Education page offers resources pertaining to art's beneficial attributes in brain stimulation and possible scientific processes that can be applied to art. Design: The design of the site is very easily understood and followed. There are no advertisements on any of the pages and links navigate within the newhorizons.org site only. Although it lacks the appearance of similar websites, this is a very simplistic and easily run learning tool. Attribution: This site's purpose is purposeful and educational. Its aims are primarily at benefiting the teacher and helping to incorporate pertinent tools to their educational programs. As a teacher I would very likely use this in constructing different approaches to learning, however I would be weary of how current and valid the information actually is due to the fact that it is retired.

Great videos on WWI. Some WWII and other videos are in the lists.

This is a site for teachers, but it is useful for students arranging a class trip. It can work as a checklist to the students to make sure that everything is set up for the class trip.

DAR.org Michelle Petty, January 22, 2011 Overview: The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) website is aimed at educating others about the American Revolution, genealogy of members and scholarships for those who meet the criteria. It is not necessarily aimed at students or teachers, but it is a very informative and useful website for American Revolution projects. The site it set up with clear tabs leading to specific sites and searches. The most important link on this site is its online library catalog, which allows individuals to search for specific battles, commanders, cities and other items related to the American Revolution. Content: This website is aimed at informing the public about the DAR and the American Revolution. It is for an older audience, middle school and high school, and would be most helpful in research projects. It is a very nice, official looking site with a clearly identified author and copyright date along with contact information to the site. The site is organized in a very user friendly way with links on the left hand side of the page, and special featured items on the right and DAR related sites across the top of the page. All links lead to educational sites, or journals that are written by experts in the field. Design: The design of this website is very official, with clearly identified authors and easy to use links. It is easy to navigate, and has links to journals, pictures, and videos that are relevant to the American Revolution. All links work and take the viewer to the correct site, and the information provided at the site is educational and useful. This site is great for American Revolution information and is one that I would use as a teacher, however it is probably too complex and advanced for younger audiences.

Jessica Chandler January 24th, 2011 *Overview: This website is to help children with the science skills. There isn't a specific age listed for this site. It seems to me that it looks appealing for younger kids, however, some of the concepts seem like upper level science questions. The website is not as easy to operate because it seems rather slow. There are three major types of categories to choose from: experiments, field trips, and adventures. Each of these categories is to teach the students more of a certain subject most interested in. As well as that, there are a few side links to click on: Curious About, Live Cams, Now in Focus, and Citizens for Planet Earth. *Content: The content seems well organized. The only thing that I found to be super beneficial though was the experiments. This could make a good project or could just be something good to learn, helping to develop better skills for science. I cannot say that I am too particularly fond of this website. I do not appreciate the amount of time I have to wait, but I think that once you get into it, it could be a great website for teachers to use to get certain experiments and ideas from. A lot of the information is interesting, but is harder for the younger students to grasp with the detailed and complicated explanations. *Design: I love the colors from this website. It was very eye catching. It has a lot of links shown, but there aren't too many that you get distracted. There isn't necessarily a title though; it just goes right into the links to choose from. I think that the website is up to date based on some of the content I read. The design is enough for the kids to get involved and isn't overwhelming for the content shown.

From the website: a new and developing online journal and resource site for teachers of Creative Writing and those who are in the process of training to become teachers of Creative Writing.

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.

Overview: I think this website could offer a lot of opportunity for teacher's when it comes to subjects and unit ideas. It seems to offer a lot of ideas for many units and themes, and also provides opportunities such as providing coloring questionnaires, and other activities easily accessed. This website is membership only to have access to everything, and it does cost money as well. However, navigating through the site I feel it would be a beneficial resource if a teacher was in need of lesson plans or activities for a unit. The design is okay, nothing too grabbing, but the website is easily navigated and a quick resource for opportunities when it comes to ideas for a unit. Content: The content is not so easily accessible, most likely to me not becoming a member for the site. The things that I do have access to seem like fun activities that can be included within a unit however; there are limited items to have access to. The items located underneath the membership field seem to offer a wider range of ideas and lesson plans, so it would seem that becoming a member would be beneficial if you needed ideas for a lot of units over time. For quick access, however, there is little to offer if a teacher needs resources quickly without having to pay a huge fee. What little links there are offered without becoming a member appears up to date and reliable, and there doesn't appear to be a bias with the website, unless having to pay a membership fee counts as being bias. Overall I feel this website would be a great resource as a teacher, the only hassle apparent is paying in order to receive all of the benefits. Design: The direction for this site are very clear, there are tabs at the top to help direct onlookers to different themes and units if Olympics is not a unit needed. There is an area for non members to access and an area that you are able to see what members are able to access. There is color added to the design which helps catch the eye, but this website is d

Posted by Kirsten McAlexander on 9/20/2009 Enchanted learning provides a variety of material for teachers of all different grades. It provides printables and information in an easy to understand way. Especially useful for k-6th grades, but has content for every grade. Content: Although this website must be paid for, you can still get many things free. It is very cheap to join only $20.00 a month and well worth it. This site provides information on a variety of languages from everything from English to Dutch. It has every subject matter as well science, math, history, and writing. It has printables, lesson plans, places for students to look things up, activities, and books to print. This website is very helpful for teachers because it has such a wide variety of things. Design: This website is very easy to navigate. The only problem I have run into is on occasion it will not accept the login. The website is very colorful and attracts the attention of young minds easily. It is full of pictures to aid learning. Attribution: Since you must pay for this website, or even the pages you can get without paying for them, you can use everything on this site without citations. A student can get on and take information without plagiarizing. Teachers can print everything on the site. The point of the site is to have information and printables that are easily accessible by teachers and easily usable by teachers.

Amanda Lemaster January 24, 2011 overview: The purpose of this website is to provide materials and ideas for elementary age children. It is intended for teachers or children to use. The resources in the website are almost endless, there are activity worksheets, coloring pages, and craft ideas. I feel that this website could be very useful for a teacher, or even a parent. The content is semi-educational, so I be careful with how I use it. content: There is a lot of content in this website. Almost all the resources that can be used are print-out activities. There are coloring pages, maps, diagrams and basic information about specific subjects. The subjects range from animals, to music to geography. There might almost be too much to this website, just be prepared to weed through a lot of information about the subject used. design: The design of this website is not exactly what most people would call up to date. When a person looks at this website they may think that this is an unreliable source. Just because of the poor quality of how it looks. There is lots of white space and many bold colors that stand out. The layout is very simple. The website is useful but could have a little better layout.

The purpose of this website is to provide information on various topics. LearningEnchanted.com provides information including sciences, literature, arts and crafts, history, and many content areas. The information provided seems to be directed towards an older audience whose life entails interaction with young children. However, it is very possible that grade school children would be able to access the website themselves. There is an "early reader's" section where children can access short chapter books or short stories. My overall impression of this website was fair. It met many of the credentials provided on the criteria sheets for content and design. However, it lacked visual appeal but excelled at providing applicable information for me as a future educator. Content: At first look, this website clearly identified its purpose and content. The founders of this website, Jeananda Col and Mitchell Spector, were clearly credited. Information on both is provided. The authors were both very well qualified to present this information and held degrees in various fields. Contact information was available. This website is updated quite frequently. Last update was on August 25, 2011. I did not find any links to outside websites. They were all connected within the EnchantedLearning site. The purpose was clear. There was commercial use because you can subscribe to the website to get more access. Also, there was basic access to many web pages that made it informational as well. The content does present the information in an effective manner but the site lacks the use of interactive opportunities. Based on my knowledge, all the information provided appeared to be accurate, consistent, and in good grammar. Although a huge fault of this website was the lack of exterior links, the content of this website are very helpful for future educators and parents. Design: The homepage of this website downloaded without any problems in two different browsers. There was no real eye appe

Evonne Raymond September 16th 2009 Content: This website is made to show new things happening in the science world. The audience is definitely for Elementary school students. The authors are dependent upon the article that you access and choose to read, and the site is Society for Science and the PUblic, its a great interactive community that believes in utilizing educational tools to teach more efficiently. It is revised daily as new events are happening in society everyday.Grammar and spelling is appropriate and suprisingly there is a lack of bias in the articles, as many of the new discoveries are not controversial subjects. The site is appropriate for kids. There are several links to other sites, as many articles are located on other sites, the site is current and has great content for teaching science in todays exciting society. Design:The webpage downloads quickly. It is easy to immediatley understand what the website is for as well as to see what link will direct you to what new scientific findeing. There are tons of grpahics and multimedia that do not deter from the web pages but make the links a little more user freindly and interactive.It is compatable with several different servers, so i would definitely utilize this website in my classroom. It is updated daily for new content, and there are some articles that are from years ago, but most are relevant to a recent scientific finding. This website is excellent for kids and adults to use inorder to teach science. Attribution: The purpose of this site is to educate kids about scientific events going on in the world today, real live science in action. This website is interesting in design as wella s in content and I think it is a great way to create some enthusiasm in kids who would be otherwise uninterested in science.

c. Overview: This site was interesting but I felt that for an elementary setting it wasn't the best. It would probably be usable in a fourth grade classroom and up just because there is a lot of reading and if I wanted to read all the article to my second or third grade classroom, it could be fun for them to see the different types of sciences that are out there. There are some really interesting experiments and videos recorded on this site so it could be really useful for students working on projects.

Content: The content for this site consists of science related articles found in magazines as well as made specifically for this site. I chose to look at this site because it could be very useful for students to see that science is not just something that we see in a lab but something that happens all around us. The content is all recent and updated frequently. The authors are those found in the field of science and give detailed accounts of experiments and what scientists are doing in a way that a child could understand. There are a lot of links to sites such as that of NASA and other recognizable science corporations. Some of these links take a longer time to download but there were few that I found that didn't work. The content of this site is also designed for an older audience so about 3rd grade and up. Large words are used and there is a lot of reading for each page. Design: This site was much different in design than that of the other two that I looked at. This sited has a lot more actual photos compared to drawings and all of them were very intriguing. Each picture brought forth curiosity about what the article might be about and a majority of the articles also had videos to go along with them. The site was also fairly easy to move around on. It did require some prior knowledge about what each main topic category was about, but even if I didn't understand them, I could figure it out from the pictures that went along with it. Everything in each category was related to the other as well and so were the links to other pages. This site is set up more for an older classroom setting though due to the large words as well as some of the photos being of complex experiments. When entering the site it looks a lot like that of a website for a newspaper or magazine, which it more or less is.