ITEC2360

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.

Overview: The Teaching Treasures website is a site created mainly for teachers. If you really wanted to, you could direct your students to this website and have them find an activity to do but the way the website is set up, I think it is targeting the teachers instead of the students. Content: On this website, you can find things such as educational games, broken up into age groups, teaching tools, as well as resources for teachers. They do provide a lot of information and activities for your classroom and seem to know the facts. There are several categories for activities, each broken up into age groups. There seems to be an activity for just about any subject and age group combination you can think of. Design: While this website provides tons of information, the way it is organized and laid out, it can prove to be quite tedious to navigate. There is so much information and categories to browse through; it seems pretty overwhelming at times. While it is difficult to navigate, I think that the layout is pretty basic and typical of a website, which isn't necessarily a good thing. I think that this website could do with a more welcoming and enticing layout to draw it's visitors in.

Sarah Kautzky January 31, 2011 Overview: The purpose of this website is to provide basic statistics help to high school and college level students. This site is intended for students who are enrolled in a statistics course and are seeking additional help and information. This website may also be used by statistics teachers to create lesson plans or be used as a reference. The information is separated into chapter like grouping. My overall impression of this site is a very good one. This is something that I would surely use as a statistics teacher and I would encourage my students to look at it and reference it as needed. Content: The creator of this website is an undergraduate professor who created it as a supplement to the textbook for his students.  He is a credible source and contact information is available in the form of a drop box. Links to other sites and sources are in working condition and are very helpful. This website achieves its purpose in delivering the basic information taught in a statistics class. All of the information is current, relevant, and correct. The information is easy to understand as well. The site is very well organized and free of bias and spelling or grammatical errors. Design: The design of this website is pretty good. There are no download errors or broken links. The homepage is very neat, clean, and organized which appeals to me, but others might be that it is plain looking. The site does not contain a table of contents because it is one in itself the way it is laid out. A copyright date is listed at the bottom of the page. Navigating the site is fairly easy and there are links that allow the user to jump to related pages. The graphics are only used when appropriate and when they add something to the material. The cleanliness and simplicity of it promotes learning and limits distraction.

Sarah KautzkyJanuary 31, 2011 Overview: The purpose of this website is to provide a small amount of information relevant to statistics courses and students and then redirect the user to other sites that deal with statistics help. This site is intended for students who are enrolled in a statistics course, high school or college. This website would be helpful to teachers teaching a statistics course, but using takes time and willingness to navigate from page to page until an answer may or may not be found. This appears to be a branch site of an online encyclopedia. My overall impression is fairly poor. Content: The creator of this website is not listed and there is no way to contact the people who run the site. There is no recent revision date or copyright date listed. Links to other sites and sources are in working condition but they are not categorized by content. There is no organization of information because the site itself provides very little information. This website does not achieve its purpose in providing help to statistics students and there is not way to know if all of the information is correct or relevant without visiting every link, and there are many of them.  Design: The design of this website is not to my liking. There are no download errors or broken links, but the entire site lacks any sense of organization. It is a hodgepodge of links and the disorganization distracts and even discourages learning. It is obvious what the title of the webpage is, but that is the only clear introduction to the site. The graphics limited and helpful. They are not excessive or annoying. Overall the site is designed not well for its intended audience. This is not a source that I would endorse or use in my classroom.

Jennifer Olmstead 1/31/2011 Overview: This site is very useful for not only students but teachers as well. There is a great deal of information and other links available on this site. the purpose of this site is to connect you to all the best spanish websites. This one site connects you to over twenty other sites. The only problems that i have is that there is so much information and sites given it is kinda hard to  decide on which site you want to use. My over all impression of this site is that the content is good but it could be designed more effectively. Content: This website clearly states that it will connect you to all the best spanish websites.It is clearly states which websites are for student resources and which ones are for teachers. Likewise, there is other information provided for both. The author and sponsor are clearly identified at the top of the page and there is contact information given ad well. This site states that it was recently updated but it does not say when it was updated.  the site seems very unbiased and serves more as an educational device. The information is a little unorganized and could be more concise. All the other links are working correctly and are all relevant to the site. Design: The website downloads fast and effectively, it also has  a lot of eye appeal. The table of context is a little far down the page and might be hard to find. The sponsor information is available. The only thing is that i could not locate a copyright date. It is pretty easy to navigate the site.  There are however graphics and pictures that don't really serve a clear purpose.

Kaci Philpot Overview: The intended purpose of this website is to provide elementary level students with fun and engaging games that build different skills and knowledge. Teachers can use some of the games for supplementing lessons such as; "volcano explorer", "chill the spill", and many more. Even games that don't seem like they would be educational are full of facts about various subjects and environmental awareness. Content Summary: For "First Look" I could not highlight the information because it was not in a text format, but the audience and basic content of the site are very clear. There were no specific authors listed for the games or information. The credibility of the authors is evident though because at the bottom near the copyright statement, it states that the company/sponsor is #1 in non-fiction media. It also has a very clear link for any questions about the site that works properly. I found it hard to find the latest revision date, most likely because the website mostly has games, but the content must be updated frequently because it has games that are up-to-date with the environmental issues today. All links to other sites work properly. In the "Information Quality" section of the evaluation, the website received all yeses. There are biases. However, they are clear when glancing through the content of the games. There was not any further information related to my purposes, but I did not really need any because I was only looking for games and activities to supplement lessons. Total yeses: 18 Total no's: 2 Total N/A: 1 Design Summary: The homepage uploaded very quickly and received all yeses. It has very strong eye appeal, it's clear what website you are visiting, and the copyright date is clearly stated at the bottom of the homepage along with the sponsor/provider. The navigation is easy and instructions for games and such are very clear and easy to follow. All internal and external links work properly. And internal links a

Overview - The purpose of this site is to sell a DVD on art curriculum to anyone willing to purchase it. I don't much care for it. Content - The content of this website is fairly straight forward - the author(s), who go unnamed and unaccredited, want to sell their "award winning" DVD on art curriculum. Which exact award their DVD won is anybody's guess. While the content is well organized into a table of contents, its actual contents is little more than reasons as to why one should purchase their DVD. My biggest qualm with the site comes at its Testimonials page, which doesn't have a single testimonial from an art educator, but school officials and superintendents instead. Design - The design is clean, simple, and attractive to the eye. It's easy to navigate, appears up-to-date, and boasts of an "award winning" DVD. Its the nice suit worn by a sleezy used car salesmen.

Jennifer Olmstead 01/31/2011 Overview: This site is full of very useful information. My over all impression of this site is very good. I think that the site has good reliable information. The only thing that is wrong is that the author information is not provided. To me, however, this is strongly over shadowed by the information that is provided. I will most definitely be using and referring this site to other people. Content: This site is very well organized and very easy for people to navigate that want to learn spanish but are not fluent enough to read the table of contents in spanish.All of the content that i reviewed was correct, current  and very accurate. However, the author is not clearly identified nor is there contact information given. The site links are all working effectively. The purpose of this site is informational and that is very clear. All of the information serves a purpose. The information is definitely unbiased and all factual.   Design: The design is very efficient and concise. It has good graphics and eye appeal that all serve a purpose. The table of contents is and other sites are all very  user friendly. Navigating through the site is totally easy. This site provides enough information  to teach someone a basic knowledge of spanish. This site is compatible with many different servers. The format is uniform through out the whole site.  There is not a last updated date but the information, because it is a language is not something that really changes. The entire site is easy and purposeful.

Kent McKee 1/31/11 Overview: http://www.ala.org/yalsa is a website by the Young Adult Services Association that intends to provide information to teachers and students alike in the field of Young Adult Literature. There are copious amounts of information on the site about novels, authors, online classes, news and events etc. The site is well organized. The purpose of this site is clear from the second you navigate to it, it's a resource for anyone interested in English Educations-specifically reading. Design: This website is put together in a clear and effective manner. It has multiple navigation options and is designed in a way that it is easy to get around; it's simple but still looks professional. The site achieves what it is intended for clearly and effectively. It's well organized and clear enough to understand that students and teachers alike could use this site. And because it isn't an overly complex website, it loads almost immediately. Content: The content on this site is clear from the second it is loaded onto the computer screen. It has all of the sites information on the center of the page with links taking you all throughout the site, and to the left hand side of the screen there are also many links to different, applicable websites. The authors of this website are clearly identified and all the information is very current.

Kent McKee 1/31/11 Overview: http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/ is a website for literature and history education. There is a lot of information on this site. Having spent a good amount of time navigating this site I can say with confidence that while there is quite a lot of information on the site, it is fairly poorly organized and it's still somewhat hard to know the basic purpose of the site. Design: The design of the site has some definite positives and negatives. As I said before, the organization of the site is difficult to understand at first and it almost has too much information on it. Not to mention the fact that the black and red design and a spinning medieval helmet (that looks like a bad clip-art) make this site pretty ugly to look at. Content: It seems as though the content of this site is all over the place. It offers tons and tons of links to navigate to, which is good, but there seems to be little discernable connection between much of the information. There is no clear author of the site either. That said, there is a lot of useful information here, it's just that the makers of the site could do a much better job in presenting it.

Lauren John 1/31/2011 http://www.learn4good.com/kids/learning_spanish_online/free_lessons_for_children.htm Overview: Although the web design is not as well put together and eye catching as the first site I reviewed, it fared much better on the checklist than the first. The site is much more organized and user friendly to navigate, with working links and activities that don't require membership. They also are available for contact and do not require any downloads/installation of products to participate. It is fairly obvious what the site covers and the content available for free versus the products you can buy. This page is effective, efficient, and conducive to several learning styles. I would use this site in my classroom someday in the future. Content Summary The content of this page is clear and indexed well so that the user can very quickly navigate to their desired lesson and know exactly what they will be learning about. I was impressed that not only the information providers were clearly identified, but the currency and the quality of the site very obvious. They also had a variety of categories to learn about, which in a language site is very desirable. All the links worked correctly and were worthwhile to the learning taking place. It covered all the areas of the content checklist with ease. Design Summary: I was happier with this site than the first for several design reasons. First of all, the homepage that downloads is not only fast, but the only place you need to go. The first site had a homepage that then took you to another menu that asked for a download before taking you into the learning space. Although it doesn't have the same eye appeal, I knew what the content was and who the sponsors were with ease. They were also available for contact! The menus had clear pictures and labels to help the user navigate efficiently, and the directions to the learning games were clear and easy to follow. Everything seemed to be in its appropriate plac

Beau Pitt 1/31/2011 mises.org Overview: The Ludwig von Mises Institute is an educational website with a clear bias towards the education of the Austrian School of Economics. Its main purpose is to advance "the scholarship of liberty in the tradition of the Austrian School" of economics in opposition to the commonly taught theories of John Maynard Keynes. The website is generally directed towards more advanced students who are interested in a more practical view of economics and is particularly geared towards those individuals already interested in the subject who wish to further their education. This is a very powerful website that offers updated daily articles, audio and video presentations, blog discussions, various events, and even offers online courses through the Mises Academy. Additionally, there are a variety of links to related social networking sites and information sites that greatly add to the quality of the website. The website further expands on its quality by presenting a well-designed home page with an attractive "coat of arms" style logo that catches the eye and helps to achieve credibility. Content: At the first look, the user of this website is able to determine the basic content and audience of the site simply by reading the title. Authors are clearly identified and information is provided about who they are and it is even possible to e-mail the author about their articles! All information is presented either as daily updated articles or in an archives section with dates provided for when the contents were first published or presented. All links are current and work properly. The site is very well organized and easy to navigate. It is clearly biased in favor of Austrian Economics and more conservative principles, but the information is accurate and well-researched. There are many educational options and activities that aid in furthering the user's understanding, and articles are all reviewed by the operators of the web

Beau Pitt 1/31/2011 www.mcwdn.org/ECONOMICS/EconMain.html Overview: The purpose of this website is to provide information on economics with no clearly identifiable intended audience. As such, it must be assumed that the intended audience is everyone interested in economics; however, the information provided is only a general overview of economics and provides no information on current topics. The website provides links to various topics that open onto a short web page with only a brief definition and short overview of the subject. Anyone hoping to gain an in-depth understanding of economics will not benefit from this website as it provides little information and is poorly designed. Content: It is difficult to quickly determine the purpose of this website. Only a strange and distracting animation at the top of the page provides any sort of clue. The user has to read the main description to get any idea about what the website is. No author is accredited to the production of the website other than simply stating that it is a VirtEd site. Whether this is a sponsor or the company responsible for the site is unclear. No contact information is provided and the logo connects to a dead link. There is no date for revision provided, although there is a US National Debt clock that appears to be current, but still offers no clue as to when the site was last updated. The purpose of the site is not clear, the content is insufficient and possibly incomplete, and while it is moderately well organized, the interactivity does not increase the value. There is a quiz available for the subjects presented, but the information is so basic that it would only be valuable to a child trying to get a better understanding for the definition of economics. The information is accurate, but simplistic, and offers no real educational value. The author of the website did not bother to edit out grammatical errors. The links provided to other websites were attached to similarly u

Ashli Hunter 2-1-11 Overview: This website is great for elementary students who are struggling with fractions. The purpose of this website is to see where the students struggle and succeed at in fractions. In this website the students are able to identify, compare, add, subtract, mulitiply, and divide fractions and then play games to further their understanding. The overall content and design of this website is basic and very easy to follow along without any broken links. Content: The content for this website is straightforward and brings you to each link that you need without going through a maze. Everything is up-to-date in information and if you should have problems it gives you the author and how to contact him. The content itself is simple and not over the top for elementary students. After each example they explain how to get the correct answer with the correct word terminology. This websit even offers worksheets that teachers can use in the classroom. Design: The design is very simple and you don't feel like you have to search for what you want. Each link brings you to each section with one click and then the student only has to count and type in the number then submit and it gives them a clear answer to the question. This website also has an explain button if the student does not understand what is being asked of him/her. This website can either be used in the classroom or at home.

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. 

Overview: Funschool is a good website for elementary students. This website provides fun games for all students k-6. The games that funschool offers cover subjects: math, science, geography, history, sports, arts, and music. Design: Funschool has a very colorful home page that is very easy to navigate. It has lots of tabs where you can chose what grade level you are in and what subject you want to learn and get better at. Funschool has a lot of cartoons and cool art that is very appealing to the younger students. The site has lots of bright neon colors that catch the eye. Content: Funschool makes learning fun through games that the students can play and get better at different subjects. Funschool also has different quizzes that the students can take to see if they are improving in the subjects that they are working on. The website is sponsored by Disney so you can tell that the site has good information.

Keenan Zimmerman 2/1/2011 Review of: http://www.busyteacherscafe.com/ Overview: Busyteachercafe is a site designed to help K-6 teachers come up with ideas. There are printables, strategies, themes, email sections and a store where I'm not sure what exactly you can buy. Most of the sections have useful ideas a teacher can use. The website is very colorful and looks like it is geared more toward 1-3 graders rather than on up to 4th 5th and 6th grade. It is not a very good website both in content and design. It has potential but at the moment it is not a very good site. Content: The content of the website seems very useful but it is very limited. There are few actual lessons or printables in each section. If the website is brand new than in a couple months I might say the website is very good content wise but at the moment the content is rather poor, another strike because we have no idea how old the site or information within the site are. The author of the material is nowhere to be found and even the e-mail section gives no clues as to who you are writing to. Design: The design is the worst part of the website. Although it has easy directions and it is rather easy to find what you are looking for, the site is littered with adds which are annoying and the search option is horrible finding almost nothing on the site when I used it. The search in the store section doesn't seem to come up with anything and because everything on the site is free I'm not sure why a store even exists.

Jackson Miller 2/1/11 Overview My second site is an educational site designed solely for English teachers. It has a variety of English exercises that could potentially be used by English teachers in their classrooms. My overall view of this site is poor. It is very confusing to navigate, and the font with everything they use is much too small. It really advertises the University of Phoenix on its home page, which is cluttered and hard to understand. I would not recommend this site to English teachers. Content It is fairly had to navigate, as it is really just a bunch of random junk thrown onto one internet page. There is no author, date of revision, or reliable contact to be found on the page. The goal of this site is very unclear, as the titles to the suggested exercises and links make very little sense and many aren't even in English. Design It is not a well laid out site at all. The entire page is just a random mess. It has decent speed, but it links to too many other sites to be really effective. It is very hard to find what you may be looking for, and it just seems cluttered to me.

Keenan Zimmerman 2/1/2011 Review: http://www.pbs.org/teachers/ Overview: PBS teachers is a part of the PBS website but it is not readily available from the pbs.org homepage. Because of this I feel it is worth writing a review for PBS teachers even though there are other PBS sites that have been reviewed. PBS teachers is a place for teachers to find resources or lesson plans for their classrooms. The site is easy to navigate and is very well done. Content: The content in PBS teachers is outstanding. There are many, many pages with resources for all subject areas. This includes projects for preschool teachers all the way up to seniors in high school. The site looks to be updated regularly and gives links to other sites that contain more content for a teacher to use. The site seems to be free from bias and is easy to understand. The authors of the material are identified. Design: The design of the site is great. The homepage is inviting and easy to look at, it is not cluttered with ads and the colors blend well together. The site is very easy to navigate being sectioned into different grade levels which are further sectioned by content area. There is also a search tool which works rather well. All the links seem to work correctly and an A-Z list which is very useful when using the search functions to find a specific link. The site uses drop down tabs which makes it very easy to narrow a search and find exactly what you are looking for.

Ben Lebeda pbs.org/teachers 9/14/11 Overview: pbs.org/teachers is a website that is devoted to teachers and providing them with resources and lesson plans on a wide variety of subjects at all grade levels. In addition to the lesson plans, there is also a discussion board in which educators can discuss topics such as special education, the necessity of the arts in school, and a multitude of other topics. Another feature of pbs.org/teachers is the professional development section that can be viewed by topic. This section provides information for educators who wish to continue their education by taking online classes on specific subjects. Content: This website made a very good first impression, as it was easy to tell that this website was intended for teachers and contained resources for them. All the lesson plans that I saw came from PBS, either from the teacher site, or from an educational TBS television program. I had a hard time finding many publication or revision dates, but none of the information was outdated, and it was all credible. It was clear that the activities and resources were intended for educational use in a classroom. Design: The design of pbs.org/teachers is effective in that it is simple to navigate around and find the desired subject. It is organized according to grade level, and then further broken down by subject matter. The ease of access and amount of information available makes this website a very valuable teacher resource, no matter what subject or grade level. There were several advertisements for other non-related websites, but it was not really distracting or overwhelming.

Kara Mitchell 1 February 2011 This website is intended for a young audience. This is evident thru the colors, animations and links. The purpose of the site is to explore areas of science, math, spelling and history. Following each link is a list of options for what the student wants to study or look into. Further down the page is a list of games the student can choose from to apply the knowledge read prior. It is simple to navigate, however I feel there are too many options for students giving the students opportunities to get off task. Content and Design: Based on content there is a good deal of information for each section. It is essentially an online textbook with pictures on each page. The content is correct as is spelling and grammar. There is a copyright and year easily accessible at the end of each page as well, making documentation very simple. As for the design, the site has a clear title page and an index of options. The site loads efficiently, quickly and is easy to navigate, as it has the same format on each page. In my opinion there are too many ads directly on the content page. Out of four ads only one is about the subject the others have no relation, or a relation that should not be included in a child's website. Overview: Overall, this website could be more interactive and child friendly. It is a bit word intensive and contains ads that should not be made available to children. There is a good bit of information that can prove very useful and if guided, through a web quest could be led to find the right information and learn more about the subject in the process. I would like there to be more videos or maybe music from the time period to help history really come to life.