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

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.

Ryan Magrum Sept 15th, 2011 Overview: The purpose of this site is to teach student about the frog system through a virtual dissection. The dissection lets the user display the organs of the frog in any combination with or without skin and skeleton without the mess of an actual dissection that many of us have done in high school biology class. The site is strait forward with a big frog picture to click on to start the dissection and various links to other information. Content: The first page has all the bureaucratic business with the contact info, the site creators and developers. There is also a link or two to other pages with more sites like this one and pages with more information. The dissection is a little disappointing. When one highlights an organ or set of organs the organs are sitting there like a real frog on a dissection dish. For a virtual dissection I wanted to see clickable options with descriptions and information (click on the heart and a box with info on the heart of a frog pops up). For a dissection, the pictures accurately depict what an actual frog looks like without the mess of a real dissection. The only other criticism is one can't physically touch the parts of a frog which is one of the benefits of the real life thing that the internet may never have. Design: The website is plain in nature. There are no fancy pictures or visual effect to draw a person into the site. I believe the site is there purely for educational purposes. The title page is white with black print and blue hyperlinks. There are no advertisements. The interactive frog brings the user to the page where the user can play around with the frog parts and view them and how the parts fit together. The art involved is somewhat primitive but the parts are colored and one can tell what they are. This interactive page is plain as well. There is no commercial aspect in this website - it is obviously for educational purposes.

Ryan Magrum Sept 15th, 2011 Overview: The purpose of this site is to provide information and updates in science in the form of news articles to the general educated public. There are links to scientific news magazines as well as links to other scientific web sites. My overall impression of this site is that it is easy to read and navigate and there is a plethora of knowledge available within the contents. It's great for students studying specific topics in science to read. Content: PhysOrg, at first glance, is not flashy and aimed at consumers. The main goal of the site is general knowledge and entertainment in the form of scientific reading. The articles, with topics ranging from nano-science to medicine, are written with very few technical terms making the content easy to comprehend by the average educated individual including high school students with background instruction in the topic of interest. The articles are news updates on the emergence of new things in science sometimes with a brief explanation of the mechanism behind the new discovery complete with figures. Such articles would be a great starting point for a research paper. The articles also include hyperlinked citations to the primary sources. There are many links to other scientific news sites. Design: This site is not aimed at attracting a passerby web surfer. The target audience is attracted to the content within and already has a general idea of what they want to get out of PhysOrg. Therefore, the site is made easy to navigate and less flashy with few advertisements and the ads on the site are related to the scientific topics and links on the site. For example: an ad for paper that is really white for printing off the articles to read as a hard copy while making the articles easier to read. The links to the articles are strait forward not to bias clicking on any specific article if in the "spotlight stories" area. All the articles are arranged for the navigator to find specific arti