ITEC2360

Great tools for helping children practice math online.

Multiplication And Division Operations

Memorizing Countries in the world and states in the United States with map-quizzes.

Overview of ancient rome

Overview: This website is awesome! It makes me want to learn all about the Colonial Times. This website is designed specifically for 3rd graders, very entertaining and kid friendly. I would have my students use this site to gather accurate information about Colonial children, it is super fun but educational, and it is really easy to navigate around. The site is a little older (2000) just because it was made by a class and it was a one time thing. Luckily the information is accurate and the class that created the site actually won an award for it! I could easily contact the creators and there is a sponsor (top left hand corner), it is very clear and precise information. Content: The information in this site is easy to understand because it talks about home life, schools, and clothing of the children during this Colonial time period. The quality of this information is entertainingly informative. The site is very specific and stays focused throughout each page. There are different links in the site that lead you to explanations of different things (clothes, school, home) and then there are links that take you to different activities. All of the content is complete because it was made at one time. I know that the information is accurate because there is a citation page that takes me to different outside websites. If I were to do a project with my class that had to do with Colonial Times I would use this site. Design: The homepage downloads really quickly and it looks awesome and easy for any 3rd grader to use. There is a specific link that is called "Contact Us" so if I as a teacher, had any questions I could easily email them. The about site is an external link but it isn't posted on the home page so it might be a little tricky to find it at first. There are different sections of the web site that are focused and have very clear directions. The class that made the web site made their own videos to demonstrate a task, very cute! Web site is accessible by any

Michelle Hill February 24, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for instruction for 1st grade internet activities. Therefore, the intended audience is teachers 1st graders and 1st grade teachers. Available on this website are English activities online involving skills such as story listening, letter recognition, literacy activities sight words, and sentence structure and grammar. Also included are Math activities such as number recognition, patterns/shapes, counting, adding/subtracting and much more! There is also unit themes available for teachers of all kinds. Content: The content of the website was rated as very useful for my information needs based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. Some strengths of this website include the first look, how it was easy to determine the basic content of the site, the information quality, and the further information. The content of the site was well organized and easy to understand. Some weaknesses of this website are that information of the authors is not available, therefore I do not know if the authors are qualified to present information on the topic. Other weaknesses include that the content was not updated frequently, the last time being August 2007 and the fact that one link to another site was not working properly. Overall, there was an abundance of good content that will prove to be useful in 1st grade classrooms. Design: The design of the website was rated as very well designed and easy to use based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. First, the homepage downloaded efficiently and the website was speedy, which was a good start to the design. Some strengths of the website include that it was well organized, the copyright date was easy to determine, the site is easy to move around, and the content was presented clearly. Some weaknesses include that there were no directions

Overview: The purpose of this site is to educate kids about the U.S. Government. On the home page it asks for a specific audience in which you belong to: K-2, 3-5, 6-8, 9-12. My impression of this site is that it is kid oriented, fun and educational to use, and also easy to navigate. It is a Government website and was updated last in May 2010, and then February of 2009. I focused on the 3-5 grader part of the website Content: The content is fun and informational about our Government. The information is cut up into different sections and aspects of the Government, from "Our Nation" to "Symbols of our Country" The content is fact driven but has a high value in my opinion because it also has games and activities. Design: The design of the site is very easy to follow and clearly states everything a student would need to know. The homepage is attractive and cartoon-like so it easily grabs the attention of the younger grades. The site is organized into different sections that are very focused on the different aspects of U.S. Government

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. 

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. 

Michelle Hill February 24, 2012 Overview: The purpose of this website is to serve as a resource for furthering education and academics at the elementary school age. Therefore, the intended audience is teachers, students, and even parents. Available resources include games, pintables, apps, and videos for the subjects such as math, English, history and more. These resources are for ages Pre-K to 6th grade, and vary depending on the subject being learned. Overall, my impression of the website was that it was a great website that can aid me throughout my teaching career and will definitely be used in the future. Content: The content of the website was rated as very useful for my information needs based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. Some strengths of the website included first look, the information providers, information quality, and further information. More strengths include that the site clearly stated the audience and basic contents of the site, information on the authors, the content was complete, information was consistent, and there were other links to other sites included. Some weaknesses of the site included that the information currency was either not provided or not applicable. The latest revision date was not provided, therefore I could not determine if the date was appropriate, so both of these were considered not applicable. Also, I had no way of telling if the content is updated frequently. Overall, the website provided a lot of content that will be useful. Design: The design of the website was rated as very well designed and easy to use based on the fact that the total number of "yes" answers outnumbered the "no" answers. Some strengths of the website design included the speed, home page, ease of navigation, use of multimedia, browser compatibility, content presentation, and availability of further information. It was all very well organized, the contents were clear, every

Overview: Although the site had many different subjects, I focused on the social studies part of it. The purpose of this site is to provide teaching resources for elementary teachers primarily in the upper grades 4th to 5th grade. I thought the website was a good resource for teachers to use find available assignments and projects to have their students complete. The website was navigator friendly in that all links were available to use but the only problem was that there was not an last updated mentioned or listed on the site so it hard to tell how often updates occur. Content: The content provided informational resources for assignments, homework, notes and projects for teachers of upper elementary grades to use for their classrooms. The information is split up into different links available for projects or assignments for students to work on. The sections include the stock market, constitution and Election Day. Although the resources given for these sites would be very helpful for a student, there is limited amount of topics for the teacher to pick from. Design: The design of the website was easy to follow. Bright colors on the page made it pop out and attention grabbing to the viewer although the color wasn't too much to handle. The background of the site appeared to look like cork board which teachers might find relatable probably having hung stuff up on cork board inside or outside of their classroom. The design made it easy to find the author clearly listed on most of the pages and it had a link to contact the author.

Overview: This website had a large choice of topics to choose from where a student could get quick facts or information on a subject. On the homepage all the different subjects ranging in alphabetical order from Art to Social studies could be researched by students. The site led to other sites that contained the information and all the secondary sites appeared to work fine. This would be a good starter website for teachers to send students to check out because they know for sure information will be correct because the site is operated by the US Government specifically for kids to use. The site was very navigator friendly which works for the benefit for both the student and teacher. No update was listed on the page was the only problem again. The website says on the bottom that it is a service from the Office of Citizen Services and Innovative Technologies, part of the U.S. General Services Administration Content: The content provided informational resources for students to use to do their research on a variety of topics. The website made it easy to find the different topics and the next link would take the student to another page that listed more specific content regarding the larger field of study. I focused on the kids part of the site but there was also more information for adults and teenagers. For the kids, they had three choices to pick from starting with learning stuff like information, playing games or watching information videos. Design: The design of the website was easy to follow. A bright background with slightly darker tabs made the page aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Three different tabs were listed for the kids section with learning stuff, playing games and watching information videos. The design of the site was easy to navigate and easy enough with navigation that kids in elementary school would not have a problem with it.

Overview: The site focused primarily on science information that focused on an elementary school audience. The site contained a lot of information on a large amount of different topics that would make it easy for a student to find information on just about any topic related to science. Different tabs included for the student are experiments, games, facts, quizzes, projects, videos and images. Students can use much of this information on their studies regarding science. Since there is a .nz at the end of the web address, the teacher can see the website was created in New Zealand. The site can also take you to other subjects like English and math although they seem to be done by same creator of this site. Content: There are a large amount of different topics that would make it easy for a student to find information. Topics include earth science, animals, chemistry, scientists, water, and weather. Each includes information on the topic and also in the site they can do activities and games. A lot of the information appears to be correct but the only problem is it is hard to tell where a lot of the information was retrieved from. It also shows that last updated date being January 9th, 2013 so all the information is fairly recent. Design: The main thing I noticed about the website's design was the color that popped out. The different sections of the site were listed with red, blue, orange, brown and other colors for the different topics. Many pictures were included on the site that makes it more interesting and entertaining for the students to look at while they are learning.

Content- This site covers just about every topic a child could think of from animals, to weather, volcanoes, to teeth. This site has everything. The home page of this site gives the different pages that information and activities can be found based on what sort of information is being looked for. There are pages for facts, science topics, experiments, lessons, videos, quizzes, pictures, and then other sorts of fun random science things. This site can be used for all age levels because there are so many different things to learn about and use on here. All the information is up to date and recent as well and the author is highly qualified to do so and updates the page frequently. The content is written in simplistic terms so that all ages can find and understand it. The site doesn't have any links to different websites but much of the information needed is all in one place. Design- When you come to the homepage of this site it is very well put together and students will know that this site will give them information about all sorts of science topics. The site is not too overwhelming because it does not have large words written across the screen, but words that students can easily read and know exactly what is being taught. The site is appealing to the eye and all pages are set up in the same manner. Pictures and videos are all relevant to the topics as are the games. The games and videos also add an interactive aspect which is important for small children to have because it helps them retain the information better Overview: Overall I really enjoyed this site. It is really easy to read and understand and students don't need a very high level of reading to do so. It is colorful which makes it appealing, especially for younger students. It also has a lot of interactive aspects such as the games, the quizzes, and the videos to help the students learn more about the topic. It is easy to get around and that will make it more enjoyable for the students as well. Also, I

Enjoy learning about science with a wide range of fun experiments, facts, games, activities, quizzes, videos and projects that are perfect for kids.

Katya Larson February 2013 Overview: This website is well set up to provide educators pictures and information about artwork of ancient peoples. It is visually appealing and easy to use. There are sources throughout the website to further information. I think it is a very well set-up website and would be very useful for art and history teachers.  Content: The content is easily accessible. From what I know, the information is correct. The author appears to be a good authority on the information. She presents the information in a well-organized format. There are no immediate flaws to the content that I noticed.  Design: The website is visually appealing with moving pictures and a sophisticated color scheme. It is easy to move around the site because most links have small descriptions and it is not overcrowded. There are no immediate flaws to the design that I noticed. 

Overview: This website would work perfectly for 5th grade students to be tested on the information that they had learned over the unit they were doing. There are many different sections that would relate to anything social studies related. The website is a little boring for my taste but the point of figuring out what the students learned is really tested with the different sections and questions. Content: None of the creators of the website are on the main page. I'm not quite sure who created the website but from the questions asked in the quizzes I know that the information is correct or I was just taught wrong. History is pretty unchangeable and the social studies part of it wouldn't change. Design: The design of the website is again a little boring but it is after all just testing what the students should have learned. I would update the look just a little bit. There are no pictures on the home page but some of the questions do have maps or other visual things.

Overview: I really like this website because it has different units that the students could work on at different times during the year. The audience would be late 4th grade or 5th grade working on US History and how we are affected by the decisions made back then. The different units really makes it hands on learning and very focused on the certain topics. The sources the site offers seem to be very straight forward. Again the page is more of a tool testing the students in a fun, interactive way. Content: The website is very straight forward with its purpose of giving the information on United States History and the different units that they website offers. There really aren't any visual aspects other than the first picture. They do have to use their mouse to move the items later on but the instructions are very focused. Design: The website does have a lot of reading that needs to be done but should be perfect for 5th graders. The author of the website is the Pearson Company who also does many other different educational websites and tools. The US History page that the students would be using is a branch off the main site and who created this certain page could be found on the "home" page. For the most part the webpage gets the point across.

Overview: National Geographic always has great information dealing with many different history or social studies events. I really like their website because the 5th grade students can navigate to this website and research a topic. The topics are straight forward and even have pictures to help the students understand what their reading about. I'm sure that if the students wanted to learn more about the topics they could research farther from this website. National Geographic has always been a key leader in what is new and coming up in social studies and other areas. Content: There are so many different topics and articles that the students can read I would highly recommend it to other teachers. You know exactly where the information comes from and if it wasn't true you know National Geographic wouldn't publish it. It is a very trusted source of information. A lot of the information on the website will change with new events. Design: As I was learning about the website I found myself wanting to read some of the articles that they offered. I stopped to read about the tattooed mummy and found it really interesting that it was a female but in the place where the mummy is from there was only male kings. Obviously if they can draw in a 19 year old college student with just a picture and a title the students shouldn't have a hard time finding something their interested in. The website has of course the yellow color scheme but also has other little pictures that offer some intriguing items. I'm probably going to read some more after I'm done with this!

Site that holds sites

Content: The content of this website focuses on earth sciences, particularly that of geography and is highly informational. The information given about the author of this site shows that he is highly qualified as well as the many awards given to this site shows that the site is one that is accurate and well kept. The information given requires some previous knowledge, but also most of the topics are well written and students can easily understand what the page is telling them. The site also goes in a predetermined order if you continue to click the "continue along site track" button. Some of the pages seem irrelevant, but as you continue, you understand why those topics were covered. There are some links to other pages but they take time to load but add information to what is being taught. Design: The design of this site is appealing on the first page, but it does not continue throughout the site. The home page catches your attention and so do some of the other pages, but not all of the pages have something for the students to look at and there are a lot of ads in the middle of the pages so students could get confused about what is part of the page and what is not. However, all of the pages have at least one reference photo for students to look at and be able to somewhat understand what the page will be about before they read the text. There are links to live cameras as well which adds to the appeal of the site. This site is also very easy to navigate as explained in the content evaluation and even if you want to deter off the provided course it is easy to find what you are searching for. Overview: This site was average to me. The information was really good and I could definitely use this site in the classroom to help explain certain processes that the earth goes through, but I feel that students would get distracted because this site doesn't have very many interactive aspects. There are also ads in this site that look like they belong with the site, but re