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Derek Peil 10/7/2012 Overview The informational website tculibrary is designed to set forth a substantial amount of resources for an audience of communication students. Many of these resources are internal and are intended to instruct students on the arts of creating an effective public speech. The external resources guide students to rich websites full of vast databases on rhetoric. With high marks on the evaluation guide, I recommend this site to educators as a source of information on topics related to communication. Content Credible information is strongly used throughout the website, and is indicated via highly organized titles. All of the links load quickly, and are up-to-date. The last revision of the site was on August 27th, 2012, indicating its accuracy and relevance for modern educational settings. Contained within the site are many links to library databases. The website provides lucid instructions on navigating through these databases, making the process of acquiring research extremely hassle free. A single weakness, or rather an inconvenience, is seemingly all the error to be found within this website. When following the link to Opposing Viewpoints, the audience is required to login using Texas Christian University credentials. This limits the usage of this site to TCU audiences only. In light of the overpowering strengths of this site, a small confinement of audience such as this is more than acceptable. Design This website appeals to a modern audience with its clean colors and organized display of information. Copyright and authorship claims are easy to spot at the top and bottom of the sites. Along the top of the homepage, a list of tabs provides simple traversing to and from links. Also, the website is full of external sources that carry the same standard of credibility as the home site. Although the website contains some graphics, it may lack the number to create a completely attractive website. Nonetheless, the pictures the site do

Derek Peil 10/7/2012 Overview Purdue University Press is a substantial source of poetry and literature for educated audiences. The website's purpose is to offer intellectual texts for educators and students to incorporate into their curriculum. Carrying a simple, pleasant tone this website lists suggested poems and literature. Although the website lacks clearly stated dates of revision, it still scores high on the evaluation guides; and I recommend this site to those who are looking for some rich pieces of literary work. Content The University of Purdue's sound reputation of information precision is exemplified throughout the course of the website. This site contains sound organization and easy navigation. With genre listings and a friendly search engine, users can find what they need quickly. This allows for Educators and Students to spend less time searching for the material and more time studying it. In contrast to these strengths, the website is weak in terms of its currency. The site fails to display a revision date. But since the site is always uploaded with new inventories and sales, one can assume the site is fairly current. Design This site's display style is definitely suitable for an educational setting. The modest, yet contrasting colors make the site enjoyable to navigate. Also, the pictures of the book covers are very useful in helping to identify one from the others. Waiting for links to load is nonexistent, and this site is multi-browser friendly. Yet, this website lacks external sources from which users can broaden their findings. All of the links are internal. Do to the fact that this site is both education and profit oriented, this weakness is easily overlooked by the benefits of a deep library of texts that this site easily lays out for the user.

Deneé Chintala October 7, 2012 Overview The purpose of cellsalive.com is for the instructor of a biology class to provide their students with interactive activities online regarding the parts of the cell, phases of mitosis and meiosis as well as more background information of microbiolgoy. The audience includes biology teacher as well as their students. The site is free with many different activities to do including quizzes and puzzles with content about cells.  Content All of the information on the site is incredibly accurate due to the author, Jim Sullivan. The site provides information in at least two ways for each link (interactive video and a summarization of the video below). Interactivity is huge on this website because the student not only gets to interact during the lesson but a review can be given to gage the student's progress at the end of the lesson. The fact that there are simple cartoon graphics which can allow students to depict different organelles help, but there are also real pictures of microorganisms throughout the site.  Design This site has flare to it with the black background and neon text. It's appealing to a middle school age group but I could see high school students finding it alluring as well. It is also easily maneuverable due to the hyperlinks on the left side as the title of the lesson. If I were to give a class of the links to click on to get to the lesson it would be a very simple task with little to no questions.

Casey KarchOctober 6, 2012 Overview:  The purpose of this site is to inform the reader on current news happening in, on, or around the ocean. It is set up so all ages can use it, but the home page is more for a literate patron due to the scholarly articles. Children can use all kinds of programs throughout the site, such as ocean portal, to learn about the ocean and it's inhabitants. Educators are benefited with an entire link to help with lesson plans. Resources are abundant and vary in type. There are articles, media videos/pictures, and social networking connections to name a few. Overall, a user could not go wrong with this site for an educational purpose. The Smithsonian sponsors Ocean Portal and all content can be trusted as a viable source. Content: At first look, the content is exceptional. Content of the site is easily determined. Information on the author is not available because many people compose this site. Authors for individual articles can be found though. The information is current to date, new articles are always added and old ones kept on the site to reference. Information quality cannot be rivaled; all information is acceptable for education. Design: The design of this page is extremely well done. The home page is eye catching and informational as well as all the subpages. When the user wants to navigate, links are clearly labeled and it is easy to maneuver. Multimedia is everywhere; a form of multimedia backs almost all articles. The revision times for Ocean Portal cannot be found, but the site is well kept. 

World War II in Europe: The purpose of this site is to give a general overview of the events that happened in Europe during World War II. It gives specific dates of the events that happened such as the Invasion of Poland. The attended audience of this website is 10th grade Modern American History students. The available resources on this website are good, reliable sources that give information about this topic but also about other countries in World War II. My overall impression of this website was that it would be a good website to use for a project that involves World War 2 in Europe because it can give the dates of events and a little information about it. Overview: This article is about World War II in Europe and the dates of the events in Europe. The strengths of this website are that the dates are accurate and that they do a good job of listing all of the dates in the corresponding year and that it doesn't just give the important dates. The weaknesses of this website are that they do not give a description of the events. Content: The content was strong because the dates were accurate and because the list of events had both major and not as major events. The content was weak because it did not have a clear author, had little information about the event, and did not discuss the role of the event. Design: The design was strong because it was easy to navigate around the site; it was well organized and knew where you were at all times on the site. It was weak because it did not have a lot of pictures and they could have done a better job of drawing the readers in.

Oct. 7th 2012 Overview: The purpose of this site is to engage young children, while teaching them about opposites. This site achieves this through use of educational games. Based on content and design it is obvious this site is intended for children. Although the site is designed for children, there are many different resources available for parents as well. This site includes games, videos, and pictures appealing to children. Content: As mentioned earlier this site is intended to entertain children while having them learn opposites. Although through further exploration of the site there are many other topics discussed. All of the material provided on this site is educational but also entertaining. Design: The website is very appealing at first glance. A fun graphic spans the top, but upon further exploring it is evident that that is the only picture on the home page, leaving a blank white screen with words. The categories are all written in the same bland font and color. Each category is geared towards Pre-K students, and is very age appropriate.

Katya Larson February 2013 Overview: This site was created to give educators and K-8 students a cache of websites to go use for educational interactive games. It is easy to navigate to the subject and topic of your choice. Once you get to the topic of your choice, there are many links to outside websites with games. It is appealing to the eye, but I do not know how useful all of the links are. Given that this website was created by educators, the games should be age appropriate, but a few have distracting advertisements.  I would use this site for "extra" activities rather than teaching activities.  Content: There is not very much content on this website because it is mostly links to other sites. The content available is accurate and the majority of the game sites seem appropriate and accurate. The link to the authors (Jefferson County Schools) is very busy and hard to navigate to find credibility, but I think the teachers who created this site are mostly credible. Design: The website looks good. It is appealing to younger students because there are cartoon pictures of other children. The colors are appealing. It is easy to navigate through the website and find what you are looking for. There is no copyright date or revision date. 

Katya Larson February 2013 Overview: The purpose of this website is to visually map major events in history chronologically. There are brief descriptions of the events for each map. The audience is for educators and secondary level students. There are many map and picture resources under the "Maps & Modules" section including previous editions of the website. I think this website is well set up because it is easy to navigate to the time period of your choice to see the corresponding map. It is nice that there are brief descriptions so you can easily review what the map is about. I think it is a very easy to use and useful site.  Content: The content is accurate and easily accessible. The maps are interactive and user-friendly. There are many links within the site to access different content. The content is free of bias and informational.  A possible downside is that there are no dates of revision, but there is evidence that the content has been revised in the past because you can view past versions of the website.  Design: The website itself does not attract the eye readily. While the information is easy to find, there are few graphics or colors that are appealing (excepting the interactive maps). The information is clearly labeled and the maps have useful descriptions. It may not be "fun", but this is a very useful site. 

Audience: Parents, but the information could also be useful for a teacher or counselor intending to provide advice or support for parents with anxious children. Overview: The purpose of this website was to explain how and why young children feel anxious, and ways in which parents or loved ones can help calm the anxious child's nerves, and the purpose is served very well. The webpage talking about specifically about school stress in young children provides multiple links and subpages that relate to management of and living with an anxiety disorder, how to recognize it is symptoms and what it looks like in both children and adults, support and resources that families could use to properly live with the disorder, and other related articles on various disorders and mental illnesses. This website is very impressive and I intended to use it for future use in the classroom. Content: This particular website provides multiple pages related to the topic of school anxiety rather than one half of one full page of information! The only thing that was not provided on this webpage was contact information. Revision and copyright dates are available, but the last revision date was in 2007… It was not very long ago, but I feel as though this information should have been looked at recently and updated with new studies that might have been found. The website states clearly that it is a medical related site with professional medical information. Overall, the given information is very well laid out and very professionally written. I am very, very impressed. Design: This website is very appealing to the eye given the amount of pictures and use of color coordination. The amount of pictures gives it just enough appeal without looking like it is too much or overbearing. Information is clearly given and easy to find, navigation is not hard to do, links seem to work properly, as the same format is followed throughout the website.

Katrina Swanson - February 25, 2013  Overview: The purpose of this website is to engage young children in elementary school but specifically focusing on a kindergarten aged level. It allows students to explore different games and activities regarding letters and numbers as well as incorporating the use of technology. There are numerous resources for children available to use from this website such as learning their numbers and letters while using a computer.  Content: The content of this website is pretty decent. From the first look of the site, the user is able to determine what audience the site is intended for and also to tell the basics of the site. There is no clear author or creator provided due to the fact that it is a student oriented site and not a site with "specific information." The site works properly and all the links provided are available and easy to access for students. The purpose of this site is very clearly indicated that it is for entertainment and learning at the same time. It is very well organized and easy for young children to maneuver around and interact with. Grammar and spelling are correct and this site has great content for students to learn about letters and numbers.  Design: This website is very intriguing by first look. A student would be enthused to use this site and eager to do the activities. The pages are attractive, and easy to access the different links to games as well as other things on the site. The site is very user friendly for young children due to the fact that they can easily go around the site. Lots of pictures, colors, and sounds are used all throughout the site to engage the children as well. It is also a great site because although it looks fun and intriguing it is also very informational to young kids.  Great website!! 

Overview:  This website is for teachers of any subject from kindergarten to 12th grade. This website has links to many different subjects and in each subject it has different lessons to teach. It gives an overview of each lesson and it explains main points in the readings. This would be a great website to brush up on a certain subject. This could be very useful for elementary teachers because they have to teach so many different subjects and this can help them better understand each subject and lessons within the subject.  Content:  The content in this website varies. It is very broad when it comes to what grade and subject. There are many different tabs and links to the different subject choices. Within each subject, it has many lessons and standards that each grade should be learning. This is very helpful when it comes to teaching because it shows what standards teachers should be teaching in the different subjects that there are.  Design: The design of this website is quite simple. When you first click on the website, it opens most of the website is white with a little green. As you scroll down, there are many tabs for the different subjects that have a picture to describe that certain subject. I like how simple it is to navigate to the different pages and subjects. There are no obnoxious links everywhere or ads on the page at all. There is a copyright at the bottom along with the date it was created and the business that owns the website. Overall, this website is very easy and user friendly. 

Samantha Cook-10/11/2012 This site Materials for the study of Ancient Sparta is a very good sight. It is brief and to the point but also gives a range of information that is very useful in one place instead of looking at many different places. The information ranges from class notes to ancient texts like the Histories by Herodotus which is very high quality information. It gives good information for a scholarly student. For the site Materials for the study of Ancient Sparta it is very useful because it is more academic then a fun younger sight. The audience for this would then be upper level high school with more of an emphasis on college because of the use of sighting ancient texts. The resources available in this website range from ancient texts to basic known information to stories. MY overall impression of this right is it is very academic, not many pictures maybe one per page and not very colorful. It does not necessarily catch your eye what caught my eye was how for one organized it was; and two how much resourceful information was on there. This site gives you a very good brief overview of the Spartans without having to look a bunch of places. It would be very helpful to me

Overview: This website is a great resource to use when creating classroom rules in early childhood. The site provides information on the different languages children have and then provides guidelines for helping students create the rules with you. It is a new way of looking at classroom rules and should definitely be read by teachers before making their class rules. Content: The content of this site is good. This information is creditable and easy to understand. It fulfills its purpose in providing ways to create rules in the classroom. The content can be quickly determined. Design: This site is a pdf document so it is not visually appealing at all. There are not any pictures or supporting links. The page does load quickly and is very easy to navigate. Aside from not presenting material visually the site does present the material in an organized manner.

Overview: This website is directed toward preschool and childcare professionals. Its purpose is to teach these professionals more about play based learning and how to bring these elements into the classroom. Content: The content of this site is reliable and professional. The creator of the site posts her entire background of working in childcare facilities. Her seminars are posted for viewing and the information given has resources to back it. The site also provides different links to sites that use this play based learning approach, and you can browse their sites for more information on how they run their programs. Design: The design of this website is good. The pages load quickly and all the URLs are correctly linked and are available. The pictures used are relevant and tie to the material. Navigating this site is also very direct and easy to follow.

Tyler Rogers February 4, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this site is to assist educators in finding the best possible space science resources available anywhere on the web. The intended audience is educators, or anybody teaching any level of space science K-12. From this site, viewers can find hundreds of links and files for useful information on space science topics. I feel like this site provides high quality information, but it is not presented well. I would only recommend this site for its content, and not its design. Content: Users will be able to identify the content of the site quickly, but may not realize that it is purely for educators. Information about each of the authors and site creators can be found easily. This site has no visible revision dates, so it cannot be determined if the information is current or updated regularly. The actual content that the directory takes users to (external web sites and PDF files) is high quality work. Most of the sources reviewed by a committee and deemed valid and appropriate. They are generally very factual and unbiased. Some of the many links on this site are broken.  Design: The homepage is not visually appealing. It is bland and boring. The lack of a table of contents, clear title, and copyright date may lead viewers to believe that the site lacks quality.  Pictures only contribute to the background, and no other multimedia is used. Once users find the directory search options, some may be frustrated that their search must be quite narrow. However, the results list is easily readable and gives a thorough description of the resource. It is impossible to tell the currency of some of these sources, and a small handful of the source links are broken. 

Tyler Rogers February 4, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this website is to provide educators with activities and lessons for space science. This website is geared towards educators. Viewers will find classroom activities, a list of standards that the site address, and links to other educational space science sites. The site is very easy to navigate, and the lessons and activities provided are of high quality. I would recommend this site to educators because of the excellent lessons, and because of the simple, yet effective layout of the entire site.  Content:  From the first click, the content is clear. Information about the author, including contact information, can be difficult to find. Revision dates are found at the bottom of the home page. By picking one of the listed topics, users will find activities and experiments created by the author. These activities can be effective for many grade levels. They are free of bias, and all the links function properly. Most of the activities contain printer-friendly pages for both the educator and the students. Design: This site has a simple design. The home page is clean, and the table of contents is clear. Copyright information and recent revision dates are available near the bottom of the screen. The site is remarkably easy to navigate: any link in the table of contents will take users to a list of every activity or classroom experiment available for that topic. Selecting an activity will then take users straight to the printable lesson. The actual lessons are all in black and white so that they can be printed easily.  This website uses very little media, as pictures only contribute to the home page, and title the banner of any other page. This site is compatible with multiple web browsers. 

Overview Report: This website is the official website for the Cross-Fit community here in Laramie, Wyoming. This website talks about where the gym is located, what specific workouts are each day, the trainers, food and nutrition facts, and tips for improving their strength and stability during their Cross Fit experience. Content Summary: I was quickly able to determine that this website was dedicated to the fitness needs of the people in Laramie. Cross Fit is a type of fitness, and I could easily tell that it was dedicated both to the community of Laramie, and to the students of the University of Wyoming. After looking around, I could identify that there was more than one author of this particular website. There was a specific tab that informed people on the trainers, and their experience with Cross Fit. Each coach had a profile that was updated and recent. The sponsors of the site were listed on the right of the website, and they were clearly identified. There were posted links to other websites for further education, and they all worked properly. The purpose of this site is for a business. The content of this website achieves this purpose, and it seems to be complete and well organized. The content of this site is easy to understand and is explained very thoroughly. This website provides clear and knowledgeable content with further resources to help solidify their facts. Design Summary: The homepage did download efficiently and was very attractive to the eye. There were many links, pictures and descriptions available. There were tabs of different information to click on in order to narrow down your search. The sponsor was clearly identified and specific information for contacting the sponsor was provided. This website was easy to navigate, and there were directions for specific parts of the site that would need further instruction.

Share My Lesson is a resource for teachers to share their lessons with other teachers, and find new ideas for lesson plans.. The page that I was particularly interested in was the high school biology teaching resources page. The intended audience for this page is biology teachers This page has a lot of different links to many different topics, and I think that it would be a great resource for a biology teacher looking for inspiration for lesson plans. The content of the site is reiterated many times, so it is very easy to determine the basic content. I wasn't really able to see who actually edits the site, but the authors of all of the lesson plans are various teachers who are members of this site. This could be a problem because I don't think there is anything requiring members to show that they are actually teachers. However, I think if a user is careful, this website would be a really excellent resource for writing lesson plans and finding worksheets etc.  The design of Share My Lesson is really well done. I think that the website looks very professional, has strong eye appeal, and it's very easy to navigate. All of the links work, and there are a lot of videos and pictures embedded into the site. The design of the site was a real strength.