ITEC2360

Design Evaluation: When a viewer first arrives at this site they are welcomed by a colorful home page. The topics are organized in a table of contents. A viewer can easily navigate the site; the topics under each page are grouped to allow easy navigation. All the interactive games on the site work properly and are relevant to the purpose of the site. The copy right date can be easily located at the bottom of each page. There appears to be no dead ends and the pages load with ease. The overall design of this site is appropriate and relevant to the audience. Content Evaluation: When a viewer first arrives at this site the target audience can be determined quickly; the audience of this site includes teacher, parents and special needs children. The purpose of do2learn is educational. The information on this site gives parents and teachers tools to use and provides children with educational games that can help in overcoming aspects of their disabilities. The content is well organized and allows for easy navigation. The information seems up to date however the revision date cannot be located easily. The content of this site is appropriate for the intended audience. Overview: Do2learn is intended to be an educational resource for teachers, parents and children. The content available on this site includes basic facts about different learning disabilities, tools for teachers to use in the classroom, and educational games. To access some of the features on this site you need to sign up for an account; however a majority of the information is available without an account. In my opinion this site could be utilized in a classroom to assist with classroom instruction. I can see myself using this site as a reference source and I could see this site being used to help children with autism and Asperger's to understand nonverbal communication. Over all I feel this site would make a good resource.

Kids.gov Michelle Petty, January 22, 2011 Overview: This website is aimed at students, ages K-8, and educators. For educators, it offers a wide range of information on topics from science, math, social studies, and health. It then access sites that are relevant to the topic selected and gives links to other sites on a variety of topics within each broad category. For students, it offers them a similar experience. They can go to social studies, and then pick current events, maps, natural history, U.S. studies and world studies depending on what they're studying. This site is great because it offers a variety of information under every category. It is easy to navigate and has very reliable and dependable sources to back its information. Content: The site is very easy to navigate; the top has tabs for students' breaking it down for grades k-5, grades 6-8, and educators. At the bottom of the homepage there is a link to an about us which gives information on the site, who maintains it and who provides the information. The Federal Citizen Information Center (FCIC) out of Pueblo, Colorado, maintains this site and if that weren't enough information it gives a link to the Pueblo site. This site is mainly links to other educational pages, but it is easy to understand and use. It is aimed at all educational branches, and provides educational sites as well as fun game sites. I would use this site in a classroom setting, because it is educational and easy to use. Design: The design of this website is pretty straightforward. It is basic which makes it easy for all ages to use, and all of the links lead to the site promised without advertisements popping up. There isn't a table of content, but it is broken down into such specific categories, that a table of contents is not necessary. The date of last revision is found on the about us tab and is clearly labeled along with who maintains the site and how to contact them. A simple, yet effective site that

Overview: This site offers all kinds of learning for kids from reading.math,writing to health and fun games to help you learn. You learn about art, music and even money. It is a great learning tool for all kids to have access to. Content: The site has many different links that you can visit but organizes them in groups so it is easier to navigate. This site provides all kinds of useful information for kids and educators. Kids can play fun and interactive games for fun learning on all kinds of topics. They can also learn about everday matters like healthy habits. The author is well recognized on the site as well as sponsor. The information is shown in a way that kids can comphrend the material. Design: The homepage is colorful and has pictures. It keeps you interested in learning with its fun graphics. Every link was well laid out and could be found easily for kids. It is frequently revised so the information is up to date.

Emily Hastings Reviewed 2/5/12 Kids.gov Purpose: The purpose of this website is to provide students with links to other educational and governmental websites for kids. Intended Audience: This site is intended for Kindergarten through eighth grade. Available Resources: This site has many resources available. That is what the purpose of this site is, to link you to other useful and educational websites. Overall Review: This website is easy to use, making it worthwhile. The information is presented clearly and simply making it easy to navigate from one link to the other. It also includes a navigation bar and a site map which are both very useful. The links have great information and do not take long to get to. There are no dead ends, and they bring you to what they say they will. This website is a great resource for finding educational sites. Overview: This site has a link for k-5, 6-8, and teachers with endless links to educational sites. It is extremely organized and very helpful when looking for sites. Content: The content of this site is for students in need of educational websites. It is a great resource for that purpose. When clicked on, the link opens quickly and the information is accurate and educational. It has many links for websites of all different subjects. Design: The design of this website isn't very eye catching, but is welcoming because it is so simple to use. You don't need directions on how to use the site. It is very organized and makes looking for these links easy. It provides you with a site map which is a list of everything in the site, which is very useful as well.

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

Design Evaluation: When a viewer first arrives at this web site they are greeted by an appealing and when organized page. The topics of this site are clearly presented in a table of contents. A viewer can easily navigate through the pages to find information and each page loads quickly. The copyright date and sponsor are clearly displayed; the copyright date is located at the bottom of each page and the sponsor is located in the upper right hand corner of the home page. The information on this site is worthwhile and relevant to special needs education. Overall the design of this site helps its purpose. Content Evaluation: When a viewer first arrives at this site the audience can be easily determined; the target audience is made up of teachers, parents and care givers of children with learning disabilities. The purpose of LD Online is informational and to provide news related to learning disabilities. The content is well organized in a table of content that can be easily navigated. The content seems to be updated frequently; however a revision date cannot be easily located. There are no dead ends on this site and the links load efficiently. The information on this site appears to be accurate and error free. Over all the content of the site meets the purpose well. Overview: LD Online is intended to be a resource for teachers, parents and care givers of children with learning disabilities. Information on this website includes basic facts about learning disabilities, finding the help you may need as a parent or care giver, and links to other resources. In my opinion this site would be very useful to teachers and parents in order to better understand their children's disabilities. The content and design of this site meets the needs of the viewer. I feel I would use this site as a resource to gain further knowledge and keep up to date with new information on learning disabilities.

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. 

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 site is to provide users with concise and easy-to-read space science materials, and to help educators guide their lessons involving space science. This site is geared towards educators looking to solidify understanding, or develop new ideas for lessons. Though the site does not specifically provide lesson plans, it does provide the knowledge from which teachers could derive their own. There are links to other educational space science sites, as well a handful of interactive activities. I feel that this site is a valuable resource, contains high quality content, and could be well utilized by educators seeking to teach space science. Content: This site's overall content is clear from the homepage, though no specific authors are listed. All of the site's content is well organized in categories. Once a reader finds their desired section of the site, the content is coherent. The material is strictly factual and contains no bias, and none of the links are broken.  It is important to note that this site fails to provide any revision dates, rendering the currency of the site unknown.  Design: Amazing Space is easy to navigate and is compatible with many web browsers. There are two viewing options a user can pick from. Not both options present the same information, but it is all organized the same. A sidebar to the left of the screen organizes all of the site's content. Users can easily find lists of clearly labeled fact sheets and activities.  The site makes use of multimedia, especially photos and pictures. The pictures contribute to the visual appeal of the site, but do not serve a greater purpose. The site's organizational downfall is that users often have to click through many links to find the desired material.

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 designed mostly for teachers, but can definitely extend out to parents. There is information ranging from developmental scales all the way to curriculum ideas. Content: The content of this site is good. The site is created by scholastic, which is a reliable company/sponsor of many things academic. The purpose of the site is very clear and all the links work well and take you to pages of strong/helpful information. Design: The design of the website is great. The homepage is attractive and the sidebar links are easy to navigate. Everything is well organized and each tab is full of relevant information.

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.

Cassie Nelson February 3, 2012 Overview The purpose of this site is to help Agriculture Educators teach in their classroom. The intended audience is Ag teachers. This website has lesson plans to help Ag teacher in the classroom. Overall, I like this website and will use it for my classroom. Not only does it have secondary lesson plans but plans for adults and middle school as well. Content At first glance you can determine the content and audience. The material is clearly identified. There is information about the author and contact information. There is not revision date provided but the content seems to be updated frequently. The content appears to be complete, organized, and meets the needs of sufficient information. Design The homepage loads efficiently. The home page is attractive and you can tell where you are within the site. The site is easy to navigate. The information in the site is worth visiting. A downfall to the site is there is no date of last revision. There is also no copyright date or date the site was established.

Overview: This website is intended for teachers or parents to find activities and worksheets for Pre K to 8th grade students. The webpage offers free materials on the core subjects in school along with seasonal activities and themes. I believe that teachers would find this website very useful in finding activities for their classroom or papers that children can take home for extra practice. My overall impression of this site is that it includes useful, updated material that is easy to find and use. Content: Looking at the content of information in this website, I have found that users would be able to quickly determine what information can be found on this site. At the very top of the page it specifically states that the website is an "educator's online resource". I also found that the website was created in 2001 but was recently updated in 2012, so it contains up to date information. The quality of this website is very well organized and is simple to understand. Almost all of the worksheets were easy to download as a PDF document, which would be great for printing. The only setback I found with this site is that information on the authors and sponsors were not readily available. Other than that small detail, I would strongly recommend this website to any elementary school teacher or home school parent; I know I will definitely use this site in the future. Design: I have found that the design of this website is very organized and appealing to the eye. Users should not have any problems moving around the site as the information is easy to find from the home page. From the home page you are able to click on the tab of any subject or grade of information you would like to find. One of the draw backs of this site is that there are no instructions on how to maneuver around the site if someone is lost. The best thing about this website is that there is a sufficient amount of information that is available to the public and organized in an easy to underst

Melanie Lenhardt ITEC 2360 2/2/2012 The World's Leading Website on Learning Disabilities and ADHD The purpose of this site is to give information to a variety of different people on learning disabilities and ADHD. It has a section for educators, a section for parents, and a section for kids. It is aimed towards all different people who may need resources on dyslexia for example, or many other disabilities. It also talks about the basics of these disabilities and how to get help from experts and so much more. Overall, I thought this site was very informative and the design of it was good. Content: The content of this website wasn't bad at all, but could use a little critiquing. The main thing that I noticed was the purpose of the site wasn't completely clear. The title didn't really explain much of what you would find on the site. You have to read more into the site in order to tell what the purpose was. It also doesn't have a last revised section anywhere. We don't know how recent the website was updated. Design: The design of this website was also good, but could use a little more color. The first page was eye catching, but the rest of the site is mostly white. Also, it doesn't talk about directions to the site which could be useful for some. Although, the site is very easy to maneuver through.

Courtney Lovell February 2, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this site is for teachers to have free lesson plan templates. The intended audience is educators teaching grades K-6. Available resources are multiple lesson plans for general subjects in elementary school. I think that this site will be very useful. As a future educator I will use this site to my benefit. Content: The content to this site is great. I am quick to determine the general information of the site and know who the intended audience is. The authors and sponsor are clearly identifiable. There is a contact us tab that is easy to access. The links on this site are working properly and beneficial to the audience. The information quality is fantastic. The site is lacking the revision date information. Design: The website design is also good. The homepage downloads efficiently and is attractive. You can tell where you are immediately while you are on the site. The copyright date is clearly labeled and the table of contents. The site is easy to navigate although there are not directions available for the user. The multimedia use is working properly. This site is definitely worth visiting if you are a elementary teacher.

Courtney Lovell February 2, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this site is to provide free lesson plans to teacher in elementary education. It covers subjects such as art, reading, writing, spelling, P.E., math, and health. This is a good tool to use when needing lesson plans for those areas. It is something I am fond of and will use in the future. Content: This site is lacking information on the author and revision dates, but other than those two qualities everything else looked really good. At the first glimpse I could easily determine the basic content and the intended audience. The information quality is great. The site is well organized and the purpose is clear. This site provides sufficient information for me because I will be an elementary educator in the future. Design: The design of this site is very eye appealing. There is a table of contents directly on the homepage which organizes the site efficiently. This site is easy to get around and the speed is adequate. This site is lacking directions for those that may need them. Over all the information given in this site will be very helpful to every elementary educator needing ideas on lesson plans.

Melanie Lenhardt ITEC 2360 2/2/2012 Easter Seals and Autism The purpose of this site is to help people of all ages with Autism. It has many different services that they provide to the people and their families. I would say that this site is aimed at the families that have someone with Autism very close to them. The site has a link to donating and it also has information on it about Autism and how to deal with it. It is a business that I'm sure makes money off of it, but it also helps these children that need it. Overall, the website is very informative and good for different people that need to know about Autism. Content: The content of this site was very good overall, but could use a few changes to make it better. This site does not have information on the authors of the site or who created it, they just have the publisher. We don't really know where the information is coming from specifically. It also does not have the last revised date on it. Design: The design of this site is also very well put together but could use a few changes. There are no directions on how to navigate through the site for those that may not know how. There are many links on where to get information, but is not completely clear. There are also no audio files or videos that saw which could also be very informative to include on their site.

Melanie Lenhardt ITEC 2360 2/2/2012 Publications and More The purpose of this site is to teach people about special education and the things that go along with it. It has all of the basic information that you need to know about dealing with it as a parent or someone in their life and useful intervention strategies. This site also has different links to satisfy a variety of needs. I would say the intended audience is parents, but is also informative for anyone. I think that overall, this website is very well designed, easy to use, and very useful for my information needs. Content: I would say that most of this website was very well put together, but there were a few things that they could do to make the site a little better. The site didn't really have a specific author/authours to the site that was clearly identified. We don't really know who they are or any information on them, but we do know how to contact the people about the site. Design: The design of this site is also very well, but could also use a little changes to make it better. I didn't find any directions on how to navigate the site. It seemed self-explanatory though, so I'm not sure that it is necessary to have one or not. I also think that the website could use more videos and images to present information on special education and the things that go along with it. There is not a last revised portion that I saw on the website, the only thing I saw was the copyright date. Last revised is important, and could definitely use that on the site.

Allyson Boyer Review date 2/2/12 This website is intended for the general public, teachers, and parents. This site is an online newspaper website and the specific page that I was interested in was a story on a teacher having an outstanding classroom environment. There are a lot of available resources as well as various categories listed on this site that you are able to view. Overall, I think that this site has good information; it is current and has a variety of stories, I would however not necessarily use it for research, but more as an enjoyment site. When I was looking over the content of this website I had mostly positive reviews. I enjoyed the fact that this website had multiple links concerning education. The site is updated daily with multiple stories, including stories from decorating your classroom to managing your classroom. I found that there were few things that I didn't like about this website, but one thing that bothered me was that there was no information about the author. It said who wrote the story, but it fails to reveal any information about the author. I also thought that the site was a little busy and disorganized. There were links everywhere. The site as I said before is updated daily, but it is not updated about the story I am interested in which is making a classroom environment enjoyable. When I first navigated to this page I thought that the story looked interesting. There was a wonderful picture displayed that showed the meaning of the story. As I began to read the page I thought it was interesting and wanted to visit the rest of the site. I ventured to the home page and found myself completely lost. There were ads for other products jumping out at me from the side margins, there were multiple tabs that I could click on everywhere, and there was a list of blogs. I kept exploring and found out that not all of the outdated material had been removed. Overall, the site seemed very busy and a little confusing to navigate, but I liked

Allyson Boyer Review date 2/2/12 This website is intended for teachers and educators. It is designed for teachers to get quick tips on how to handle their classroom, how to discipline in the classroom, and an overall view on education. There is not a list of available resources, but there are people who can comment and give their opinion on the articles, some of these comments are left by teachers. My overall impression of this site was that there is a lot of information, but it's not organized well. There could be more graphics involved as well to make it more appealing to the reader. When I was looking over the content of this website I found that I had positive reactions. I found that the site was updated in 2012 and the information was relevant to the page. I also liked that the site was not bias in any way and that it gave open suggestions for teachers to explore at their own will. I did however find some things that I was not so impressed with. On the home page there is no author so you are not able to research anything about the writer, but if you click on a link there is often an author displayed on certain articles provided. Because there are multiple authors, or some authors not listed at all it is difficult to find out if the information is accurate. This website did seem like a good source of information because the New York Times Company helps sponsor it. Overall, there are many links on this site to help teachers with various situations such as classroom rules, ice breakers for the first day of class, and discipline tips. When I came across this site I was not impressed with the graphic design. The website looked very busy and there were not a lot of pictures. I did however find that the information that was provided would be very useful. There were also no directions for this site if you were lost. You just have to click around until you find what you are looking for. I also found that there was outdated material lingering on this site. I'm

Allyson Boyer Review date 2/2/12 This website is intended for mostly teachers, but parents could also benefit from this site. It is designed for teachers and parents to find fun arts and craft ideas, as well as educational worksheets. The purpose of this site is for teachers to find free, and fun activates for their students to enjoy. There are plenty of subject areas for educators to explore and find ideas to use in their classrooms. I enjoyed this website because it reminded me of when I was in elementary school and teachers would have fun worksheets for different holidays. We still were learning, but it made more interesting having a light hearted worksheet. There is no specific author for this site, there is a section where people can write reviews and all of them were positive, so it seems to be a good resource for educators and parents. When I was looking over the content of this website I found that most of my evaluations were positive. I did find however, that I did not like the fact that there was no information about the author. I would have liked to be able to read a bit about the author and their views or opinions on the information that they had provided. I also found that there was not a lot of interactivity to increase the value of this website. It would have been nice to be able to experiment a little with the worksheets and pictures, instead of just printing them out. Overall, the rest of the site looked sophisticated and contained good information. The links all worked, the grammar and spelling seemed to be correct, and there was a link to contact the provider of the website. I enjoyed the variety of the worksheets for different subject areas and feel that will be very helpful in the future for my career. When I first navigated to this site I found that it was not very eye catching. I looked over it carefully to realize that the information would be useful. As I browsed through the website I found that there were not many graphics through