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Overview This site is for grade levels kindergarten through high school. It has so many different subjects that you can access from Reading and Writing, Math, Social Studies, Science, Language, and Foreign Languages. To help the students prepare for these subjects for tests, quizzes, or even homework, this website has test prep for all grades and subjects. This website has puzzles, printable activities, and critical thinking exercises for students to engage in and have more fun on the website. This website also includes information for teachers. Teachers are able find lesson plans and worksheets for their classrooms. This website is very well layed out and easy to navigate for teachers and students. My observation of this website is good. Content There are so many different subjects you can learn about, and every subject has different content that contains important information that you can learn about. You can learn about anything! This website mandates that you be a member in order to be able to make use of all the activities and information. Design This website design is very easy to maneuver and navigate through. The subjects are surrounded by many different games, puzzles, and critical thinking activities that students can access. It is very well organized and has great pictures and themes. This website clearly shows that it is very informative and promotes interaction by the student or teacher.

Posted by Kirsten McAlexander on 9/20/2009 Scholastic is an excellent website for teachers, students, parents and administrators. Scholastic provides something for everyone. It includes grades pre k-12th. Content: Scholastic provides different activities for students, parents, and teachers. It is an excellent website for everyone. The only disadvantage is that it cost $39.99 a year. But that is relatively cheap for all that it provides. For teachers it provides lesson plans, activities, books to buy, games, and printables. It includes every subject and every grade. It provides information from real teachers throughout the states including strategies, how to integrate technology, time management and much more. Scholastic provides many very useful tips for new teachers. It provides printables for those who finish quickly and for those that need more help along with homework worksheets. Scholastic brings everything that a teacher will need and puts it all on one website for quick and easy results. Design: Scholastic is very easy to navigate. It clearly labels all topics, and has a search bar for a those who need things fast. Scholastic is very colorful and appealing to the eye. It allows you to search by both subject and grade so you can easily marrow down what you are looking for. Attribution: Since you must pay for the site, everything is downloadable and easy to use. It does not require any extra work to remove all unnecessary information from the page before you print.

Posted by Mitchell Clark 9/18/09: CliffNotes is a site that provides free summary-type information and helpful tips for just about anything education related. Content: CliffNotes is a site sponsored by Wiley Publishing that covers just about everything that is involved with education. This site provides free information for subjects such as literature, writing, foreign language, math, science, college, test prepping, and more. The articles found under these subjects are easy to cite but may not provide an author. One of the things that set this site apart from similar sites is that it provides information on topics such as getting into college, avoiding scholarship scams, AP test, college entrance exams and grad school entrance exams. Also this site is updated on a regular basis making the information up to date, but as mentioned before there may not be a credible author. This site also offers full length practice test for the SAT, AP Biology, AP English, and AP Chemistry, but these resources are not free. As far as organization goes this site is decent, it is easy to navigate the main subjects such as literature or foreign language but there is so much advertising that it can be both confusing and distracting when reading down the page. Design: Apart from the advertising this site is well designed and easy to navigate. There is a search bar at the top right of the window as well as multiple tabs that link to various subjects of education. The home page is bombarded with ads, but they are mainly advertisements for student travel programs, back to school supplies or the Army ROTC program. The sponsor of the site is clearly stated at the bottom of the page and there is a link to their contact information. This site uses very little graphics aside from their advertising, but the page is still visually attractive due to the well known black and yellow color scheme. Attributes: This site comes from a credible source for review or study purposes. The infor

Mike Wilson Site review September 18, 2009 NASA Education Grades 9-12 Introduction As this is a NASA site, it is an awesome resource. While my selection is for Grades 9-12, the site covers K-12 + higher education. The purpose is to give all students direct access to NASA space and aeronautics content through educational programs including high school internships. The A-Z Index for Students contains links to hundreds of NASA programs. The main NASA Education home page has a Google rank of 8/10, the Grades 9-12 has a Google rank of 6/10. Content Evaluation First Look First look is a bit busy and boxy. There are 7 + information boxes above the fold along with a top left menu. Information Providers It is NASA! Information Currency Last updated September 15,2009 by Shelly Canright. Extensive and updated future, current and past NASA program information. Information Quality The quality of the information is exceptional and seemingly endless, presented in a wide variety of formats. Images, video, podcasts, NASA TV, Interactive, 3D, RSS, Blogs. Design Evaluation Speed As with most NASA sites, a bit slow on the load. Considering the information presented, on each page, the speed is acceptable. Home Page If you are a space science student, this is the page for you. Geared to the 9-12 viewer with the exciting science you are looking for. Ease of Navigation Due to the depth of the information, there is some digging to be done to get what you want. Use of multimedia Comprehensive use of all multimedia formats. Browser compatibility Viewed only on IE7 Content Presentation From NASA Facebook, Career Profiles, MyNasa for homework help, Missions, if it's Space Science you will find it here presented world class.

Content: The content of this website is very straight forward. However, at the same time it's well organized and puts off the feeling of professionalism. The main purpose of this site is to express the overall goal for every child, which is to make them into life long readers. Yet, with that goal they need to have guided instruction and engaging materials to make them efficient ones. So with that, this site gives a list of areas teachers can focus on to make that goal achievable (literature, reading comprehension, vocabulary, writing, ECT...). Since the primary focus is dealing with 2nd graders, teachers need to be able to present this material in a way that actively engages the students. Once that's accomplished hopefully they will begin to develop a real joy of reading and to read a wide variety of materials. Some might think this site is only for those who are educators but active parents can help guide their children by reading to them and helping with their homework. Design: Personally I believe that this site is designed very well. The colors they use are very appealing to the eyes and it is also presented in a manner that is easily understandable. When accessing this site it downloaded efficiently while also allowing the user to move around the site with ease. The information that is provided is very helpful, if teachers don't already have the basic knowledge of what is expected this site will give a brief insight on what is to be anticipated from each student. Attribution: This site seems to be a very established and projects information that is not only useful to teachers but allows children's development levels to be ranged all over the map. Meaning, this site is designed to help children that are struggling as well as the ones who are already progressively succeeding in this area of learning.

Overview: Although the site had many different subjects, I focused on the social studies part of it. The purpose of this site is to provide teaching resources for elementary teachers primarily in the upper grades 4th to 5th grade. I thought the website was a good resource for teachers to use find available assignments and projects to have their students complete. The website was navigator friendly in that all links were available to use but the only problem was that there was not an last updated mentioned or listed on the site so it hard to tell how often updates occur. Content: The content provided informational resources for assignments, homework, notes and projects for teachers of upper elementary grades to use for their classrooms. The information is split up into different links available for projects or assignments for students to work on. The sections include the stock market, constitution and Election Day. Although the resources given for these sites would be very helpful for a student, there is limited amount of topics for the teacher to pick from. Design: The design of the website was easy to follow. Bright colors on the page made it pop out and attention grabbing to the viewer although the color wasn't too much to handle. The background of the site appeared to look like cork board which teachers might find relatable probably having hung stuff up on cork board inside or outside of their classroom. The design made it easy to find the author clearly listed on most of the pages and it had a link to contact the author.

Audience: Parents, but with the provided information, it can easily be translated into advice for teachers, guardians or loved ones of a student. Overview: The purpose of this website is to provide parents with information about how to work with and help children who have anxiety disorders relating to school. Available resources that have been provided on this page include information on how to prepare a special needs child for school, how to help relieve a child's anxiety or depression, and ways to help a special needs child with homework. Though there were some minor visual and content flaws about the site, it does give good advice and is worth revisiting when needed. Content: This page mainly provided different approaches for parents to take and numerous tips to follow when dealing with their anxious child, but those tips and approaches can be very useful to parents and the main point of each tip is given immediately. Intended purpose was clear and in bold print. There's no wondering and translating what each tip "could have" meant or what it "was trying to say". The only thing that the website didn't provide was the last revision date. The website also provided additional videos, but they were not directly related to school anxiety---under the "Related Video" section, there were videos on ways to relieve breastfeeding problems, relieve separation and anxiety, and what as 504 Plan was. Though there are available articles given to further advance a viewer's knowledge on ways to help children with anxiety, or "special needs", the "Related Videos" (except for the breastfeeding problems one!!!) does mention other related anxieties and provides a useful way to help an anxious child succeed and feel comfortable in school (aka the 504 plan). This website is definitely one that is worth revisiting just because it does provide useful tips and points to help viewers learn about how to help an anxious child, without any word confusion.

Similar to edmodo

Kayla Hyde 10/21/2013 Overview: This site is a teaching tool for teachers to use to organize and view all the content they would need for a class. The class has the ability to post dissections and homework to the teacher. Also, the teacher can grade assignments and post grade all on this site, making it easy for students to see. Content: This website is a great we to organize everything for the class. It is free for the basic needs and a small price for over the top things. It would work more for older students in middle school or high school level. Design: This site is really easy to follow and get around. All the info you would need is at your figure tips and is very organized. It is clear of its goals and objectives and target audience of teachers. This is a tool for teachers and less for students.

Paige Hanewald 10/21/13 Overall: The purpose of this specific branch of the HippoCampus website is a resource that can be utilized by both teachers in explaining lessons and high school students in interactively researching reading and writing strategies that concern evaluating text, forming a thesis, writing fundamentals, characteristics of specific types of essays, and more. Overall, I believe that this is a simple resource that could provide a lot of insight to students having trouble in reading and writing content areas. Content: The content provides lessons as well as some interactive activities. It explains certain aspects in writing that teachers seem to assume students already know such as passive and active voice, punctuation, grammar, forming a well-thought out thesis statement and other fundamentals of writing. Unfortunately, because of the features presented on this website, you must have good Internet and either Adobe Flash Player or Quicktime. Design: This site looks boring. While it is very informative, so much information with such a lack of "oomph!" can bore a middle or high school student and put him or her to sleep. While it is very easy to navigate, compared to other websites, the interactive components such as videos and activities don't seem as engaging to kids above the 6th grade.

Morgan Kuchta September 1, 2010 Sparknotes.com Overview This site is a great resource for students who struggle with reading in school. The website provides book and chapter summaries and plot overviews along with character analysis for all main characters in each book reviewed. The books that Spark Notes provides information on are those that have deep and complex plot lines and character development that are often found in classrooms of all grade levels. Perhaps one of the most useful tools on this website is called "No Fear Shakespeare", which translates the old English of Shakespeare into modern English so that students might have an easier time remembering information and comprehending it. Although the site organization is poor and it throws too much information onto one page, I believe this website could be an extremely valuable resource to teachers who assign reading to their classes. Content At first look it is easy to tell where you are and what is provided, in general, on the site. The audience is pretty clearly defined as students but it is difficult to tell exactly who will benefit most from this sitel There were no listed authors for the site although there were authors listed for each of the book summaries done on each separate page with an email address attached. The revision dates are included on every book review and the links to related sites are all functioning. The information quality was incredible. Although it was not well organized, it is by far the most comprehensive literacy site that I have used in the last few years. The other links posted were pretty good, although most of them were just for the interest of the users rather than usefulness for help with English homework. Design The homepage download was no problem, while it was attractive to the eye, it was a little information heavy and a it was kind of hard to tell exactly where I needed to navigate. There were a LOT of advertisements in the margins and even in other areas of th

Randi McInerney September 15, 2011 Overview: The website "Sparknotes" is an educational and entertainment website with various study resources available. The information is most relevant to high school aged students, but late middle school and college students, as well as teachers, could also benefit from this site. College video tours, book summaries, analysis, and quizzes, and ACT/SAT/AP/GRE test preparation material, and news articles are also available. The content and design are effective and organized, but the advertisements can be distracting and seem overwhelming. This site can be abused by students wishing to plagiarize or to avoid reading a book, but has so many great things to offer if it is used appropriately. Content: There is a lot of educational material available on this site. Video clips, interactive tours, blogs, cartoons, and more can all be found on this site. There are various links in order to contact them, but no direct contact information like an address is provided. Besides educational material, there is lifestyle, entertainment, and dating information. I think that this may be distracting from the educational aspects of the site, but it makes sense because of the audience the website is intended for. Design: The site downloads efficiently and is visually interesting, especially for the intended audience of young adults. The site is easy to navigate, especially if you know what you are looking for from the start. In this case, the search bar will help you easily locate what you are looking for if it is indeed on the site.

Sparknotes is a resource aimed at high school and college students. It offers summaries of literary works as well as test prep. The main purpose of the site is to simplify in-depth texts down to a modern English level. Unfortunately, these summaries are not all that is available. The site largely consist of entertainment news. This aspect dominates the site, making it hard to find the reviews and study resources. Because of this my overall impression is that the site includes a good about of information for those looking for it, but is also a place where one can very easily get side tracked, rendering its information useless. It is worth a bookmark, but is not the most useful thing. The content of this site is very diverse. As for the literary summaries, there are over 100 on some of the best known works in many different subject areas. The site is up to date and loads easily. Most of the summaries are based off of the most recent publications of texts. The site is confused about its purpose. The summaries and text prep sections are hard to find while entertainment news is profusely advertised and easy to find. The educational sections are labeled in small black index style links, while the entertainment section has large magazine like spreads. Although the site has relevant information that is consistent and helpful, it is congested with much needless gossip that has potential for abuse. The websites speed is quite good. It loads very fast comparatively. The homepage is attractive, but is attractive for the wrong reasons. It is hard to find relevant information on the site (although there is a lot of it). This makes navigation of the site difficult and can easily suck the user into a "twilight zone." The site is strong on most platforms, even having apps available. Content presentation is mores streamlined on the app, but is congested on a web version. An administrator is available to answer any questions and provide further information.

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.

How to tackle word problems in Algebra

Webquest website

Posted by Erika Jeffs on 1/24/2010 Overview: Brightstorm is a dot com website for high school students to prepare for various college preparation exams, such as, the ACTs and SATs along with advanced placement exams. The site offers practice on certain subjects of the tests. The math section is particularly emphasized and has wide range of high school level material. It includes videos of concepts and practice problems that are very helpful. However, the website does sell practice packages which is the ultimate goal of this website. Content: The audience and purpose of this website is very clear. There is information about the creators of this website along with their credentials. The "managers" are qualified and contact information is available. The site has current information and seems to have been updated this year. The purpose is obvious, they do not try to hide that they ultimately wants to sell something. Brightstorm is effective for practicing high school level math and has accurate information. The site is interactive because it offers videos teaching concepts and practice problems as well as a question/answer feature. Also, it is very easy to navigate because it is organized and has clearly marked tabs. As far as I can tell, grammar and spelling are correct. There are not many outside links. Overall, this website as good content. Design: The page loads quickly. When you arrive at the home page, it is appealing and not too cluttered. There are clearly marked tabs that contain the most important aspects of the site. There is also another set of tabs that are easy to find with information about the creators and contact information. The copyright is clearly stated. Navigation is very simple because everything is broken into subjects, and many video clips are available that load quickly and work well. The math section is particularly helpful and has a lot of useful information for high school students. It is very simple to find the informa

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.

Awesome math website for elementary school!

Lucas Sutton Feb. 1, 2010 Content: At the top of the website, the subtitle has the following to describe the site, "Created by the people. Can you help?." As a website reviewer this is a big red flag. All of the information on this site is user based and the site does not explain the information screening process. There is no contact information available on the site and there is no mention of anybody in charge of the web page. There are also no available content revision dates. The content is organized well in groups and subgroups. Overall, I would be tentative trusting any of the information on this website because of the unknown nature of the info, and if it is correct or not. Design: Upon arrival at the site algebra.com, you can tell it has been very undeveloped. It is covered in adds that are not related to the subject and many odd links at the bottom. To find the information the site makes available you must actively search through all of the links and other clutter on the site. The information although well labeled, is not very thorough and very hard to understand. Overview: Algebra.com is a user based site for help in pre-algebra through geometry and up to algebra II. The website includes many resources useful to a student having trouble with math. Overall, the home page, although very basic, gets its intended use out very well. But because of the clutter and ads on the home page, I would be very careful trusting any of the information on the page because of the unknown authors and lack of contacts on the site.

Chelsey Lynch 1/31/11 * Overview: The purpose of this site is to aid students in higher level math classes with problems they may be having and provide further resources. There is an extremely wide variety of available resources on this site. There is everything from enrichment lessons, games, puzzles, links for graphing paper, and overviews of any math content areas. This website contains a great deal of information, but it is not organized very well. At first glance this site looks like it could be very helpful, but once you spend fifteen minutes trying to find what you are looking for it seems a little useless. * Design: This website is attractive and has an interesting layout upon first glance, but after further examination is clearly not very user friendly. The material on this site is far too broad to all be in one site. There are several topics to select from and once you click on that it takes you to another page where you then have to make another selection to actually get where you want on the page. The copywriter date is current and visible, but there are too many advertisements on this page to focus on anything, much less, mathematics. * Content: The basic content of this site is noticeably math but I find the bullets to select from rather broad. Information about the author cannot be found on the website, though there is a link to e-mail them. This leads me to wonder if this information is relevant or even accurate. The sponsor of this site was also very difficult to locate. This site is meant to be useful for higher level math classes, such as high school classes, but I found the help links difficult to understand. This site does contain links to the right of the page for other math related sites. This links worked, and were much more efficient than this one.

I have used the website www.TheMathWebSite.com in my classroom for the past 6 years. By using the internet technology fully in the math classroom, teachers spend less time in preparation/marking drudgery and more time interacting and helping your students. It is intended to be used to assist math class instructions by providing typical examples and solutions to most high school level math topics. 1)  Begin with Bellwork. Choose some questions from a Quiz or Test Sheet, and give out to the class via paper, blackboard or projector.  Let students mark their own or each others. 2)  Give a Quiz on yesterday's topics for marking.  Students can mark their own, each others, or the teacher can mark.  Everyone can do the same quiz, or a different quiz via paper, blackboard, projector. 3) Present the Class Lesson  using examples from the Quiz or Test Sheets.  Show questions and solution steps on a projector or overhead. Present as many examples as needed. Click on the question and the solution steps appear or disappear. OR Present the Class Lesson  via the Lessonboard using the mouse drag & drop method. The lesson can be created and presented line by line via projector/overhead or blackboard. OR Present the Class Lesson  via the Lesson Sheets. The Lesson Sheets only present one question or example at a time. Click on the question and the solution steps appear or disappear. Present as many different examples as needed. 4)  Give some Practice. Choose examples from the Quiz Sheets which allow immediate student checking of answers from the bottom of the sheets. Tests have answers that can be clicked out. 5)  Present a math Diversion such as a Puzzle, Activity, Game, or Enrichment topic to maintain their interest in math and to put some fun into the class. 6)  Assign the Homework. Show students the source of extra practice sheets on the website if they or their parents wish to get extra

Mark Hyde www.shmoop.com Overview: This is a good site for students to go on to find information on many things. It is full of information that has been written by credible sources. Good source to go to study or to find information. Has lots of links to different subjects. Content: Has anything from mythology to any historic event. Click on a subject and you get a introduction followed by many other things such as summary, themes, the myth and other information about it. It has links to study for big tests such as ACT and SAT. Design: Very colorful and appealing to high school kids. It is easy to use and to find subjects to study. Click on a big subject and it lists little things inside that subject to learn more about. Set up really well, but can seem pretty packed in the main page of it.

Overview: This website is intended to help students, parents and educators with math. Though there is a lot of tools on this website that can help a student as well as educators the main website its too helpful, I'm sure if I bought the full membership it would be more helpful but there are several people who cannot afford to get memberships for websites. Content: For students this website offers discussions, problems of the weeks, a "Ask Dr. Math" feature, and other math tools to help with homework. For parents and teachers there is newsletters as well as teacher to teacher discussion group and a discussion page about the NCTM Standards. Design: The design is a little hard to follow, for a student I would have had a difficult time figuring out this website. Due to its mature design it seems like it is targeted more towards educators and how they can introduce math and NCTM standards into their classrooms.