Group items tagged

Overview This site is designed for teachers, students, and parents. It really helps them really get to know the school's expectations and resources and really be able to know what's going on with the student at school. It has great lesson plans for grade levels first through fifth grade. This site also has great resources for kids to find information in the library. It also shows different projects for each grade level in different subjects. Their goal for this site is "to encourage students and teachers to use their creativity and support their ideas and curriculum." This site really wants students, teachers, and parents to work together. Content The content on this site is well put together. It is easy for elementary kids to access this as well as their parents. The site includes helpful links to other websites for kids to learn more about literacy. There is no revision date on the site, but this site does include a detailed description of the site and the school as well as a address and phone for contacting. One of the best parts on the website would be the library section. It has great information for kids to search through different topics on sites and obtain information from those sites as well. Design This site is great for what it does for the school. The library section of the site is well organized in all the information it provides. Everything is labeled and has brief sentences describing what the student will learn while they are reading. It includes great pictures, animations, videos, and games for the student. It provides all of the things that a website can possible provide to help the kids learn to love literacy at their school. This site is overall a great website as it gets the parents involved with their students and their school. It gets the student involved to read more, and teachers to improve on their students' literacy skills.

Sarah Skinner on January 22, 2010 Overview The purpose of this website is to allow teacher to find literacy web resources. There are a variety of different links available for primary grade teachers that are beneficial to their students and their learning. You can learn about some favorite books and authors and also retrieve lesson plans that use the tips provided on this page. My impression on this site sit that it's very useful. There are many links available that can be used as a teacher. Content It is very easy to determine the basic content of the site and the intended audience is clear. The author is not on this site and no information is available about the site so it is unclear if they are qualified to give out this information. The sponsor is not clear as well and there is no contact link to ask questions to the sponsor. The latest revision date is available. It is very out of date. The last time this site was revised was in 2007. Links all still work. The purpose of this site is clearly informational. The content seems to be complete and well organized. It offers information related to my needs. The content seems to be not bias. There is no interactivity that increases its value but does have a lot of useful information that is consistent with similar sources. The grammar and spelling are correct throughout the page as well. Design The homepage downloaded efficiently, but the homepage is very plain and not very attractive. The page tells you where you are. There is a clear index at the top of the page that leads you to many other links. There is no sponsor provided that is clear. There is not information for contacting the sponsor and there is no copyright date provided that is easy to determine. It is very easy to navigate around the website. There are directions to help you where to find information. The links to other pages are appropriate. The graphics fit well with the information that is being provided. I have only tried Internet Explorer a

Overview: The Literary Center Education Network is a website created to help children with basic literacy needs in elementary school. There is tons of helpful information for parents and teachers as well as activities for students. This website has several categories of learning that focus on all aspects of elementary level literacy. Content: On this website, you will find a tab titled 'Play and Learn'. In this tab there are several categories that the student is able to choose from including uppercase and lowercase letters, shapes, writing, words, numbers, colors, and keyboard. Once the student enters each category, there is an activity that includes a woman's voice that narrates what the student is to be doing. There is also a 'Parents and Teachers' tab which includes things several additional activities that can be implemented to correspond with the activities the children have already done in the Play and Learn tab. Design: I believe that the design of this website is very user-friendly once the child has entered the Play and Learn tab. There may be some difficulty in getting to this tab, as it is not especially distinctive from the other sections of the website but once they are in the Play and Learn tab, there are several links accompanied by pictures that are easy to navigate even for a child.

Site on information literacy (including standards for higher eduction) and resources for teaching these skills

Overview Professional Development in Literacy and Technology Integration is to help teachers strengthen and learn more about teaching of reading and writing. This website is to help grade levels K-12. The lesson plans for teachers are very informative and this site tells you which books would be great to read for reading and writing for different grade levels. Some of the lessons plans are little outdated, but overall this website is very informative for teachers to learn what they need to for reading and writing. Content This website has a tab at the top of the page that says "What's New" It updates teachers about what is new on the website page, and each month it tells you what the site has been awarded for, updates on technology in certain subjects, and also important articles that teachers should read to get updated in reading and writing. The contents of the website are well displayed for teachers to easily find their lesson plans . Design The web pages are very eye appealing. They show pictures and animations for each reading and writing topic.This site has a search button for teachers to help them find what they are looking for.The books that teachers are able to find for reading are updated. I had trouble getting into some of the other different areas, but other than that this website is helpful for teachers to find materials they need for inside their classroom, great lesson plans for them to teach to their students, and a better understanding of reading and writing.

John Ripley 9/13 Overview: This is a site produced by the Federal Reserve to promote financial literacy. It is aimed at providing information and activities to all age groups from kindergarten to adult. There are only two games/activities for the K-4 level and I didn't think that either one was especially good. There are several more games for kids at older age levels that are a little better. I still can't imagine kids getting excited about playing any of the games that I looked at though. The games/activities are only a small part of the site and I think that the real strength of the site lies in the information that it provides for a high school age audience that might be exposed to the information through a teacher in a classroom that could help interpret it. The educational value is more as an aid to a teacher in planning a lesson or relaying a concept rather than assigning the

Michelle Hill February 24, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for instruction for 1st grade internet activities. Therefore, the intended audience is teachers 1st graders and 1st grade teachers. Available on this website are English activities online involving skills such as story listening, letter recognition, literacy activities sight words, and sentence structure and grammar. Also included are Math activities such as number recognition, patterns/shapes, counting, adding/subtracting and much more! There is also unit themes available for teachers of all kinds. Content: The content of the website was rated as very useful for my information needs based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. Some strengths of this website include the first look, how it was easy to determine the basic content of the site, the information quality, and the further information. The content of the site was well organized and easy to understand. Some weaknesses of this website are that information of the authors is not available, therefore I do not know if the authors are qualified to present information on the topic. Other weaknesses include that the content was not updated frequently, the last time being August 2007 and the fact that one link to another site was not working properly. Overall, there was an abundance of good content that will prove to be useful in 1st grade classrooms. Design: The design of the website was rated as very well designed and easy to use based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. First, the homepage downloaded efficiently and the website was speedy, which was a good start to the design. Some strengths of the website include that it was well organized, the copyright date was easy to determine, the site is easy to move around, and the content was presented clearly. Some weaknesses include that there were no directions

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.

This website was meant to give a lot of information about World War 2. The language of the site requires a fair level of literacy, making the intended audience teenagers or older. This site offers numerous links and timelines and a good outline of the events of World War 2. However, the design is poor, and there seems to be a lack of authors or sponsors. This website makes a poor impression.

Jaymie Sheehan ITEC 2360-04 9/2/2010 OVERVIEW For this review, I visited the National Council of Teachers of English site, http://www.ncte.org. The intended audience for this site is clearly for English, literacy and language art teachers, from the elementary to college levels. The intended purpose of the site is to provide these educators with information and resources that will help them improve in the classroom. The site has various resources including professional development, press relating to English and education, shopping, and the ability to interact with different educators. I felt that this site was great for a multitude of reasons. The layout is simple and extremely easy to navigate, there were seemingly unlimited resources and links for teachers of each grade level, educators are able to use this site to interact with one another and become more proficient in their classrooms. located at NCTE. By scrolling down the page, one can find the sponsor's address and phone numbers if quandaries arise. There is also a specific tab that allows the user to contact NCTE for any variety or reasons. The information on the site is kept current. All links seem to work and are relevant, however I found no date telling the user when the last revisions were made. The information quality of this site is superb. The purpose of the site is clear and everything seems to be complete. There is myriad information located within the site for teachers. Of course, since this is a site aimed toward English teachers all grammar and spelling seem to be correct!

Alexis Lunberg: February 1, 2011 The purpose of this site is to help children with their reading by using interactive games and guided reading. The intended audience would be for low level readers like kindergarten through third grade. The site also has a few things for teachers to use so teachers are also an intended audience. The website offers interactive games and guided reading stories for the children. The website also provides literacy worksheets, lesson plans, and reading software for teachers. Overall the design and content of the website is good, but could use improvement. Content The viewer is easily able to see the intended audience for the site and it provide quite a bit of information about the creator. It even gives a link for his blog if the viewer wants to learn more about him. The site is up to date and outdated information is no longer on the site. The information is effective and there are reviews on the site that praise the website. The site would be good for small children because it is easy to understand and has interactive games. Design The design of this website could use some work on the home page. The homepage isn't very appealing and the visitor can't tell what the sites title is right away. Also the site does not clearly identify the sponsor and the copyright date on the website. Another problem with the design of the website is that the view doesn't know when the last time the site was updated. The website also has beneficial things about it. One of the good things about the websites design is that it is easy to navigate. It takes less than three steps to get where you want. The site also uses good graphics and is effective in several different browsers. The overall design of the site could use some work but it is usable and worth visiting.

Roy, the tale of the singing ZebraOverview- This website is very cute! It is such a good idea to get young children involved. The audience is young grades such as k-2. The website is all about reading. I thought it was a really cool way to get kids to read in a different way. The interactive reading games and guided readings would really help those kids just learning to read. Although the site may be a little busy for the little ones to navigate with a little teacher help they would get a lot out of it.  Content-  At first look this website looks like it is easy to use and looks fun for kids. The author of the website is clearly defined, you can access his blog and look at investors and contact him personally. Which would be great if any teachers had questions. The website looks current although it does not have any current dates or update dates. The links work great within the website. The content in the website is great, all of the spelling is right and the information is helpful. The site would be very helpful for young children. Design- When opening this website it loads quickly and looks very appealing. Although the home page is not clearly labeled you can tell that you are there. There is a clear index at the top of the page telling you where you can go. Which makes the navigation in the site great. The use of media is great! They have moving pictures, which is very appealing to young children. The site looks current although there is no current date. But everything in the cite looks wonderful and would be great for kids to navigate. 

Alexis Lunberg: February 1, 2011 The purpose of this website is to provide games and activities for young children in math, science, and literacy. The site also provides a link for homework help. Each section of the website is supposed to provide interactive teaching games and activities for the subject provided. The intended audience looks like it would be around kindergarten through third grade. The design is really simple and not very eye catching and there isn't very much content on the homepage. Since there isn't very much content it is hard to know what is actually on the site. Content There are a lot of things to critique on the content of this website. First of all it is very hard to identify what age group the site is intended for, and there is very little information about the person/people who made the website. Also the viewer has no idea when the site was made and whether the site has been updated. Some of the links to the other sections of the website are not working and the site doesn't really meet the purposes that the teacher would think it would. The games are of low quality and outdated. Overall the site doesn't have very good content. Design The design of the website can overall be confusing if you are trying to get back to where you started. The homepage isn't very attractive and the graphics can be kind of confusing. For instance the math section has a graphic of numbers above the text, so you would assume that the games in that section would be very basic. There are some basic games in this section but there are some that are so challenging that they seem like they don't belong. Several of the links are outdated or broken and there isn't a consistent format used throughout the website. Also the links on the website aren't very useful. Overall the design needs a lot of help.

Interactive tools are used for literacy learning. Many grade levels available and many different types of reading and writing skills.

Overview This site has so many useful tools for both students and teachers. Current teachers are the authors of this site which is very unique and useful. Teachers that are currently in the classroom know from experience what works and what doesn't and this site helps them share useful resources for other teachers. Not only is this site great for teachers and students but also for parents who want to get my involved in their student's education. Content This site is phenomenal in the amount of useful tools it provides. It has a tab for classroom resources which has lesson plans, student interactive, calendar activities, and printouts. The student interactivities section has a lot of resources for students who need assistance in writing. All grades are available on this site which is useful for all teachers. There is also a search bar along the left side that helps to narrow done the content and grade level for fast and easy findings. The parent section also has many great things that parent's can use to help their students. It's great to have a site that allows the parents to get involved even with their high school students. Design The design of this site is very organized and neat. It's really easy to find what you are looking for especially with the help of the search bar. The grade levels are categorized for easy use also. The interactive section is really easy to use. The directions are very clear and use to understand which is great for younger children. It's just a very user-friendly site and it's very professional looking.

Dr. Arlys has put together a bunch of sites that are great activities for children to do in math, literacy, and science

K-3 SmartBoard Sites created by SmartBoard 1. Click on an Activity 2. Click on Download this Lesson Activity **It will download it to your computer and it will open the lesson on the SmartBoard

OVERVIEW: The purpose to explore readingrockets.org is to learn how to teach small children how to read and to see research that has been done on children reading. The audience for this website includes parents, teachers, principals, librarians, school psychologists, school counselors, and speech pathologists. If you fit into one of these specific categories all you need to do is click on the link at the top of the home page. There are numerous resources available on Reading rockets ranging from videos on how to teach reading to resources for school psychologists helping struggling readers. The Reading rockets website gave me a fantastic first impression. One of the first things I did on this site was watch a movie and I learned many new and interesting things! CONTENT: Like all of the other websites I reviewed, the content of readingrockets.org was fabulous. The information given seemed to be accurate and the content is complete. The information was easy to understand and extremely interesting. If anybody was struggling teaching a child to read, this is the first site I would direct them to. It does a wonderful job satisfying the need of teaching literature and reading. DESIGN: There is a lot going on at the home page of readingrockets.org, but it is well organized and easy to navigate. There is a table of contents bar with links not only on the top but also on the left side. All of the links work great. I did not experience any problems with getting to a specific web page on the site. Finally, the website is current with a 2012 copyright date at the bottom of the home page. Overall the design of Reading rockets is fantastic.

Bailey Stanfield Reviewed 10/12/2014       This is a very informational source. The audience it is directed towards is very clear. There are specific tabs for each different audience including teachers, parents, kids, administrators and librarians. Pertinent information for each different audience is found easily under each of the tabs. Scholastics is a book company so they are obviously pushing for the literature aspect of education. The website is very appealing and works well for the target audiences.  The content is very easy to see and is very well provided. Scholastic is a very well-known company, and they are sure to keep the information on their website up to date with quality information. They had a new post on the new books for October so that their audience can always be aware of new, upcoming books that may be of interest to them. The content of the website is very solid and easy to find.  The design of the website is also very well done. On the home page they grab the audience's attention by having a video playing. The theme of the video is "open a world of possibilities". This plays into their company as whole seeing as they sell books, but also plays into the emotional aspects that captivate their audience. The design allows for easy navigation through the website and clearly presents the content. 

Brianna O'Shea October 13, 2014 Overview: The purpose of this article is to tell the two sides of bilingual classes and what both side, whether to keep in schools or get rid of, think about bilingual classes in relation to their children. Some believe that teaching a second language simply hinders teaching and lowers test scores while the other side believes that students should have the right to learn two languages, including their home language. The audience is meant for those debating whether to keep bilingual classes in their children's' schools or not, especially Latino parents. Overall, this article is a good read and presents good reasons on both sides of the argument. Content: The title states both the purpose of the article and the intended audience, yet while the author is provided, information about the author is not available. The sponsor is identified, yet there is not obvious way to contact them. The article is up to date and the content is complete while also achieving its purpose. It is organized and doesn't seem to be biased as it presents both sides. Design: The title is clear and it is visually attractive with small, easy to read paragraphs. The sponsor is clearly identified and the copyright date is easy to find. It is easy to search the site and provides good information to make the site worth visiting. The format is consistent throughout the site and is easy to follow. The date is clearly visible yet no link is provided to contact the author.

Content: This website contains lots and lots of stuff. It is set up like a classroom and has a reading link, a math link, a playground link, and an arcade link. I think this is more of a game site than an educational one. There are also lots of links to other help sites, but the majority of the links are for advertiser's webpage's, distracting visitors. Design: After looking at it for awhile, I started to feel lost and uninterested because of all the advertisements and the lack of visuals. There are thousands of links for kids to go to, and the actual site doesn't really support a good learning environment. As said above, it's mostly games with reading sections that really looks fun, but if you have to look through the games to get to that section, students will probably never get there on their own. The visual part of this website is interesting. The homepage is pretty boring and filled with links, but the reading and games tabs are designed for younger students. Attribution: The purpose of this site is probably intended to promote learning is fun, but becomes easily more of a distraction with all of the advertisements. I don't think I would promote this site in my classroom without adult supervision because students could so easily be distracted by toys and games.

Overview The purpose of this website is to help kids interact with math and reading. The intended audience is K-8. My overall impression of the website is that is very beneficial and a good free website for students to practice math and reading, whereas with other websites you have to pay to use the website. Content The only thing that I would critique on this website is having other links that would be appropriate and have to do with reading and math. But other than that, I would highly recommend this website. Design I think that everything is up to date but there is no for sure way to tell on the website, there is the copy right that does say 2013 but there is no one hundred percent way to tell if it has all been updated. So this is one thing that I would change on the design for the website.

Trevor Montgomery For this resource, we see another website that in a way, tricks students into thinking they are just playing games by giving them subject related activities. With the subjects of math and reading, students having interactive games, books and comics and even more fun links, without thinking they are doing much work. Through the "Funbrain" arcade, students can also complete activities and must pass obstacles to get through an interactive game board. If they do not successfully complete an activity, they will not be able to get past their current location, but will feel challenged to get through each activity and will most likely attempt multiple times until mastery of the activity. The great thing about this website is that students can also use codes to pick up where they left off on the game board so that they do not have to start over each time they log on (with their parents' permission of course). From grades 1st through 8th, there is a great variability from subjects, and students who are feeling extra brave might even try a level of difficulty higher than their current grade level. As someone who used this website in school when he was in elementary school, I can say that this resource is extremely effective and I think that students will come back to it time and time again. Navigating the website is easy enough. If you type in www.funbrain.com in the url box, you will be directed to the site. From here, you can choose to use the math arcade, reading, fun arcade, playground, and all games tabs, as well as books & comics and more fun activities. This website is specifically directed towards the audience of students in grades 1st through 8th, so as a teacher you can trust it to be safe and student-friendly.