Thursday, February 26, 2015

Website Evaluations

Search Engines
According to Roblyer and Doering (2013), search engines are “special searching programs to help us locate things” (p. 219). This resource can be useful in helping students locate things for the classroom. If a student is having difficulty understanding a mathematics concept, they have the ability to do a search via a search engine to find resources that can help them understand the concept in which they are having difficulty with. The students have the option of performing a “subject index search” or a “keyword search” (Roblyer & Doering, 2013, p. 219).

Website Evaluation Video
This video will help students in evaluating websites. I like how this video discriminates between websites that are used for research and websites that are used to gather facts. Some websites may be useful for quick information but not for a research paper. This information is good for students in their everyday life. This video is also interesting in that it applies to an activity, rather than just a lecture. This video discusses using a website for the purpose of “information collection and analyses” (Roblyer & Doering, 2013, p. 239).

Favorite Web Site #1
My favorite website is khanacademy.org. This website has “good structure and organization” (Roblyer & Doering, 2013, p. 255). This website is easy to navigate and is organized in a useful, clear way. Pages are labeled clearly making it easy for the user to distinguish between which hyperlinks take them to which pages. This would be useful in a classroom for students to use as a resource. Many resources are located in one website with tutorial videos. The easy design makes it student friendly for navigation.

Favorite Web Site #2 (must be an example wiki)
This is the link to a classroom Wiki that I evaluated and found was a good website. The thing that I liked about this website was the easy navigation. According to Roblyer and Doering (2013), “Pages should always load very quickly. It’s easy to get around in the site. Links are provided so that you can get back to the main page from any part of the site” (p. 255). This Wiki site has all of these features. Although the front page does not have great visual design, the other pages have good, simple designs. All of the links are located on the left side of the page, making it easy to navigate between pages. This website would be useful in a classroom because it has a lot of information for the students. I would model my Wiki after this one because it has organized information. A student does not have to spend a lot of time scrolling, seeking a certain file. The files and links are clearly labeled, for the ease of the user.


3 comments:

  1. I liked your choice of video. It was precise and to the point, but also engaging. The wiki page you linked was decent enough, but i imagine that you would probably make your's more engaging. Mr. Alien's was a little sad, but it fufilled it's purpose. Anyway, it's a good base point to gather ideas from.

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  2. I enjoyed the video you chose. I found it to be very informative and had a lesson integrated into the video. I liked watching the children being able to defend their websites. How could you apply this to mathematics? I found the video and lesson to have and be “student-oriented and cooperative problem-solving projects” (Roblyer & Doering, 2013, p. 239).

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  3. Couldn't agree more on how useful Khan Academy is. According to Roeblyer and Doering (2013) online curriculum must have high interaction and engagement to be successful (p. 211). While they do seem to be talking about online classes, not just a lesson, the same rules still apply. Khan Academy does a great job at presenting information in an engaging way for students to further their understanding and one that will keep them coming back in the future.

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