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Olivia Mabie-January 24, 2010 Content: This website has suggestions for games, activities, and lesson plans used to encourage team building among elementary school students. There is a description of the website located near the top of the page, therefore if it does not match what the teacher is looking for then they do not have to waste their time on the website. There are hands on activities for parents and students and for teachers to use in the classroom to get the students to start working together. Once the links are clicked on there are many other interactive activities on those websites also. These links have many subjects incorporated within them, which is nice that the students get to work together and learn about the subjects at the same time. Design: There are no pop-ups or ads on this website which makes it very easy to navigate. One nice thing about this website is under each of the links there is a description about what will be on the website. If a teacher is in a hurry to find a link they are not wasting their time trying to figure out what is on the website. The layout of the website is very neat and organized. Who published the site, when it was published and last updated are all located at the bottom of the page and helps knowing they go through and get rid of the old information and websites which are located on the home page. Overview: This is a great site for teachers to use in order to get their students working together. I liked how this website stated at the bottom of the page that there have not been standard assigned for this source. This site has all the information that needs to be posted on the website such as, who the publisher is, who you can contact if you have any questions, and when it was revised, which means that they have gotten rid of any old information and sites.

Overview Garbology is an interactive online game that is designed for educators to use with their kids to learn about waste. I think this game would be best used with kids that are in upper elementary or middle school but you could expand that age range. It is intended to increase awareness of garbage, recycling, composting, and nature conservancy. This website is well designed and easy to operate. It is clear that they have a lot of resources put into this site.

Lana Macdonald Aug 31, 2010 Overview: As the site indicates, it is for dummies. The content is very elementary for those who wish to learn algebra. A few reviews of the page state that it is a waste of time, yet others state that the site cleared up questions they have had for years. If the user of the site has some algebraic knowledge then the site is most likely not useful. However, if the user struggles with the terminology and basic steps of algebra, this site is for them. Overall the information given in the site is correct but the graphics make it hard to learn. Content: The author of the site is not given; however, the site is based off a well-known series of books that are considered creditable. The site is current, all links are updated. The content of the site is very vast, however the organization of the site allows the user to find what is needed quick and easy. The information given is very helpful, but since the information is given by video, the user may feel that the video explains too quickly. The resources given on the page are not very helpful in learning more about math. Design: This site is attractive, and uses up to date graphics to attract users. The site is easy to navigate and very user friendly. The format of the site is consistent throughout the pages. The new age technology may not work well for teaching math. The site employs video to teach math problems. This has some advantages and some disadvantages. Some advantages allow for the type of people who learn best by listening to learn easily. However, the videos can go fast for the user, and make it harder to learn. Another advantage is that a problem can be explained more effectively as the speaker walks through a problem. One solution the site might try is in addition to the video, have a few problems worked out below the video for a quick overview of what is in the video.

Sara Hindman January 24, 2010 Overview I evaluated the Discovery Kids website because of my interest of the Discovery channel. The purpose of this website is to advertise the channel and I know this because of all the emphasis on their characters. Although the website's main purpose is to advertise, another purpose is educational. Most of their games have no educational value whatsoever, but I was did manage to find some that were extremely beneficial. One was the Build a Volcano game in which the student controls the viscosity and gas of a volcano and watches to see what happens when different variables are increased or decreased. Another game was Make a Mummy, which the student learns about the different procedures the body must go through in order to become a mummy. I learned many things I did not know before. The intended audience for this website is ages seven through twelve. I did not find any links to other websites. I find this website to be a waste except for the few games I found to be educational. Content The Discovery Kids website clearly stated its purpose of advertising and the intended audience by pasting most of their television characters on the home page. Like the nobelprize.org, kids.discovery.com failed to state who the author of the website is, although I was able to find when the last revision was (2010.) The information quality is great, there is nothing "under construction" or inaccurate. There is no further information for this website. Overall I would say the content is ok, nothing spectacular. Design The design of this website is good because of its eye-catching pages. I completely understand why children would find this website appealing because it has everything to offer children; their favorite characters and fun games. The speed of this website is fast and it is easy to navigate. All of the multimedia is loaded fast and provided perfect quality. I am not sure if this website is compatible was different browser bec

Emily Hastings Reviewed: 2/5/12 Kbears.com Purpose: The purpose of this website is to provide students with a fun educational environment. Intended Audience: This site is intended for Kindergarten through fifth grade. Available Resources: This site has its information on it with no need for links to other sites, but it does offer a link for a KBparent site. Overall Review: This website would be fun for students to use during their free time or as a reward for achieving a goal or some other assignment. It is a fun site for students, and could also be used in a classroom as a class or at home. It isn't very broad of a site, it only has a limited number of things to do, which may be hard to use at times and also could get boring. It is hard to navigate around unless you have sound and are able to listen to what each of the avatars are saying. Overall I think this site is more for fun and education at home, or on students own time, but is a fun site for them. Overview: This site offers information in many subjects. It has a lot of reading, so students need to be able to read. It is animated with many characters that talk and videos that are fun for students. It consists of many different things to do and learn about. Content: The content of this website is informative for students and fun. It has unusual ideas and activities, rather than your normal site. After a while on this site you might run out of things to do though, which may become a problem. Design: The design of this website is eye catching, but not very welcoming. It definitely interests you with the characters on the homepage, but is set up as if you were on a ship or something. Unless you're able to use sound this site is going to be quite useless for you, which could be a problem. It is harder to navigate around and the homepage isn't set up very simply so it could be a waste of time until you got the hang of it. Overall the design area is "cute" but unorgan

Seth Orndorff February 1, 2011 Bad site review Overview This site claims to have cool math, but fails to offer anything that can be considered as beneficial to students working on math. This site did more distracting than helping. The cool math games that are a part of the site do not teach any applicable math skills to kids. This site should not be used in an educational setting. There is no separation of skills and grade levels which means that it is difficult to assign certain activities to certain aged kids. The site is also very limited. Once a game is beat, it is beat and that is it. There are no further applications of what the student was supposed to learn. The site also lacks encouragement. Kids cannot see past results and compare them with new scores to see their improvement. The site is also extremely slow and has advertisements all along the side which do not help students with math. Content Evaluation The content of this website is very poor. When the page is first opened, it looks like a typical game page that is not educational. The name of the site, "cool math" is very deceiving. This site also lacks sufficient information on who created the site and whether or not they have any credentials. The date that the site was last revised is unknown to me. I could not find a date that it had been revised last. The information that it does have has very poor quality. Although it claims to be a math site, it is more of a game site where the games teach more problem solving skills than actual math. This may seem beneficial at first, but each game only has about ten levels. This means that after just a little while, the games are beat on memory rather than figuring out new ways to solve the problem. There is no further information that would lead a student to get more help on math. Design Evaluation The design of this site is just as poor as the content. The page takes a long time to load, and once it is loaded, there is no appeal to the h

Posted by Allie Parrott 09/17/09: Homework spot is a site that simplifies the search for popular homework topics assigned to students K-12. It can also be used by parents and teachers. Content: This site covers a variety of topics. There are even virtual field trips. Other benefits this site provides are SAT tips, current events, and how to write a great book report. Students can find almost anything they need here. The site was last updated today. The incoming information is always fresh and relevant to what students are learning today. There are not only articles from their own authors, but also links to articles that may provide better information for the student. Information is presented in a clear manner. The sight is sponsored by a bigger company StartSpot Media Works Incorporated. HomeworkSpot would help any child navigate their way around the internet. It is also beneficial because the sites that are recommended are credible well researched sites. Design: The most helpful part of the design is that is separates the topics in to age groups. There are a number of links under the heading "Elementary" and the same goes for the headings "Middle" and "High School". This way there is no time wasted, looking but information that is above a child's head, or below their level. The only flaw in the design is that the user has to click at least links to find what they are looking for. However, once they find it the information is most likely exactly what they are looking for. There are Google ads, however advertising is only on the homepage and is kept to a minimum. Attributions: The most helpful link for this is the "About this Site" link. It gives the user all the necessary information about what the site is about and who is running it. It makes the purpose very clear. This would be another site I would recommend due to its fairly obvious credibility. \n

Sam Burns, 9/20/2009 The Leo Translator site is better than most online translators I have found four many of reasons. First of all it is a German site so it is easier to find the word that you are looking for. Also, the site is made by professionals and is designed to help with finding specific words, not for writing sentences like other translation sites which more often than not, are completely wrong. Content: The Leo Translator is basically just a giant online German to English dictionary. It is in German but has a link to switch the site to English. Leo has a spot to type in any word, German or English, and then it quickly brings results in the opposite language the initial word was typed. My favorite part about Leo is that when a word is typed, it gives many different translations and then it is the user's job to pick the correct one. On most other translation sites the word is just assumed and one translation is given. This can cause mistakes and is also, in my opinion, a waste of time. I think that Leo is more for advanced levels of students because of how in depth the translation results are, but it is a very useful tool. Design: Leo is very easy to navigate and very well planned out. It is easy to find where to type the word that you want translated. Also, the translated words are displayed clearly and in bold font. The website is not too appealing as far as color and pictures go but that is not necessary. The site loads quickly after every word and is very efficient. Another benefit of Leo is that after each search, related links to the word are displayed at the bottom of the page. This can be very helpful when trying to understand a new word.

Overview This site is designed to give the latest news on Hazardous chemicals and recycling. Content The content is detailed, offering teachers some of the latest information on classroom chemicals for lab work and general chemical safety information regarding care and disposal of chemicals. It also, offers educational material for professionals as well as some classroom lab options and suggestions. The site is worth bookmarking for future reference. Design The design looks professional. It is comfortable and clear to use and it's easy to read. The information is up-to-date. There are multiple resources for a visitor such as video clips. It works the same in multiple browsers. The information content is worthy of visit. Overall: It is very well designed and easy to use.

Ryan Magrum Sept. 15th, 2011 Overview: The site is an online game site known as Armorgames.com consisting mostly flash games aimed at wasting time. However, there is a game Armorgames offers called CellCraft. While CellCraft is fundamentally a game, there are many aspects of it that are very educational. The goal of the game is to command a cell to grow and function as an animal and/or plant cell would and utilize all the functions and organelles as would an actual cell. The game explains all of the functions of the organelles you control and gives some information on the different parts of the cell, how the cell utilizes energy, and reproduces and fights off attack. The instruction in the game is similar to a high school biology class. Content: The game has multiple levels. Each level has a specific goal for the cell which the user controls. Each level also give some explanation of the new organelles available for use as well as the intentions of the antagonistic elements that an average cell has to deal with on a regular basis like infection and replication. The game has instruction for both plant and animal cells and all the included features of cells. It focuses on teaching the user how a cell operates and how to create a strategy to help the cell survive. The effects of the game are very close to reality - neglecting the very fine details. Design: It's a game. It comes with instructions. The game goes chronologically, so to speak, beginning from a time where the user can only move the cell around, to growing and fighting off infection, then to exploring new worlds and avoiding extinction. Just like in a biology class room, the student is expected to learn the basics and then think critically about problems using the basic knowledge to solve the problem, so does CellCraft. The game takes the user, educates the user on how a cell works (and I mean just about everything one would learn in a general biology class), and sends the user off to ke

Posted by Mitchell Clark 9/18/09: Lesson Planet is a search engine designed to save the effort of designing various lesson plans by providing over 150,000 teacher approved lesson plans and over 75,000 worksheets. This site provides material for all subjects in grades K-12 and also includes state standards. Content: This Education World sponsored site has an incredible amount of information that has been provided by many teachers in various fields. It has lesson plans for all grade levels and all subjects including math, science and technology, language arts, education, social studies, health, art and music, and it also includes research resources. Each lesson plan includes the author and date that the lesson plan was posted. Also every lesson plan is rated on a scale of 1-5 by other teachers so you don't waste your time searching through inadequate lessons. Another great feature about this site is that because teachers can post their own lesson plans, there are always new and relevant lesson plans. These plans are easy to access due to multiple links which are designated to different fields of education i.e. science or math. There is also a search bar at the top of the web page that allows the user to search specific lesson plans as well as narrow their search results to grade level and rating (1-5). Overall this is a well organized site that provides a wealth of knowledge. The only thing to keep in mind is that these plans are posted by individual teachers which could contribute to a partial bias in the lesson plan. Another thing to consider is that there is $40 dollar membership fee for this site which is an inconvenience, but this fee also discourages the submission of junk lesson plans and worksheets by other internet users. Design: This site is well designed and very easy to navigate. There are no advertisements or links to unrelated material. The sponsor of the site and contact information is clearly displayed at the bottom of the page as well as t

-Overview: Lesson Planet is an excellent resource for teachers to find ideas and lesson plans for specific topics and grade levels. They are able to type in exactly what they are looking for and it is just like a Google search engine just for lesson plans. There are other links to related articles and blogs for teachers, and there are places where teachers can access the standards. It is a very good place to create lessons from and gain ideas for teaching successfully in the classroom. -Content: The content is easily accessible from exactly what the teacher types in to find. There are specific tabs and easy instructions to help the teacher find what they are looking for. It is a very helpful resource tool that teachers can use to plan activities for specific subjects, for a specific standard and find worksheets and articles that relate to the topic they are teaching. There is a huge amount of content within the website that is easily accessible for anyone who would like to use it. On each page there are tabs to things that relate to the topic as well as a list of subtopics that are easily accessible as well. -Design: The creators are in the process of creating a new design that may be more visually appealing, but currently the design is very simple and professional. It has enough color and visual recognition tools to help you locate specific things quickly and find what you are looking for without creating distractions and taking away from the content. The search portion is big and centered on the top of the homepage so it is easy to type in and find exactly what you need right off the home page.

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