Website Evaluations

Website Evaluations Tatum Colitz Decemeber 1, 2011 CS322-ILC

Table of Contents • For Teachers: • Teacher Aides • Teach-nology.com • PBS Teachers • Sites for Teachers • My Gradebook • Education World • Teacher Vision • Networking • Classroom 2.0 • Teachers.net • Websites for Teachers, Students, and Parents • Enchanted Learning • Scholastic • Smithsonian Education • Kaboose • For Students: • Reading, Writing, and/or Math • Starfall • Storybird • CoolMath • Geography • USA Capital Crunch • All Subjects Covered • KidsKnowIt • National Geographic for Kids • BrainPop • Wonder Rotunda

Teach-nology.com(Teacher Aides) • http://www.teach-nology.com/ • Purpose: to provide resources for teachers including lesson plans, rubrics, worksheets, etc. • Pros: easy to navigate, has plenty of resources, includes teaching tips from other experiences teachers as well as lesson plans geared for inclusive classrooms. • Cons: must pay and become a member in order to receive all of the benefits.

PBS Teachers(Teacher Aides) • http://www.pbs.org/teachers/ • Purpose: to provide teachers with lesson plans, observations and suggestions from other teachers, and links to articles that they may find interesting. • Pros: has a section “What’s New on PBS Teachers” which will help if you consistently use the website, has lesson plans at the top of the page organized by grade level and subject, includes a teachers discussion board. • Cons: a lot going on in the page which makes it a little hard to follow, the lesson plans are good once you pick a subject area, but you must go through about 40 pages to find a lesson plan that could be helpful.

Sites for Teachers(Teacher Aides) • http://www.websites4teachers.com/ • Purpose: to provide teachers with recommended educational websites that will assist them in day to day classroom activities. • Pros: very simple to navigate, updated daily, the websites are listed under categories, a wide variety of topics such as Lesson Plans, Gradebooks, Educational Software, and Worksheets & Printables, free. • Cons: Although I found a majority of the websites to be very helpful, some of them were not useful at all and had no purpose of being listed on this website.

My Gradebook(Teacher Aides) • http://www.mygradebook.com/ • Purpose: teachers can enter grades into this online gradebook that will automatically calculate the student’s scores. • Pros: allows teachers to be very organized and access their gradebook wherever there is a computer, many different features such as choosing between elementary or secondary formats, creating sub-categories, weighting grades, take attendance, and uploading a seating chart. • Cons: you can sign up for a free 30-day trial, but then you must pay in order to reap the benefits of this website. Also difficult to navigate.

Education World(Teacher Aides) • http://www.educationworld.com/ • Purpose: to provide teachers with lesson plans, problem-solving strategies, and other aides to run an efficient classroom. • Pros: gives teachers ideas on lesson plan topics, has lesson plan templates and, ideas for integrating technology into daily lesson., Also has events, chartrooms, and articles to read on professional development and how to solve school issues. The site also has a special community application so that teachers can see events occurring or get ideas for lesson plans that relate to what is going on in the community. • Cons: not very well organized, many distracting ads, you really have to take your time sorting through all of the options provided to find something that you really could use.

Teacher Vision(Teacher Aides) • http://www.teachervision.fen.com/ • Purpose: to help teachers save time by featuring classroom-ready lesson plans, printables, and resources. • Pros: Lesson plans are very organized, newsletter can be sent to you, sidebar stating all the upcoming holidays and suggestions for how teachers can incorporate it into their lessons, free • Cons: so much stuff featured on each page that it can be overwhelming, not all of the lesson plans featured on this page are very useful so it may be time consuming to sort through all of them.

Classroom 2.0(Networking) • http://www.classroom20.com/ • Purpose: Classroom 2.0 is a social network where teachers can share ideas, ask for help, receive event invitations that are relevant to you or your students, etc. • Pros: Looking through the social network there appeared to many great ideas, everyone seemed very welcoming and helpful to someone who asked for assistance with a problem, provides links to other useful educational websites, its free…you just have to sign up. • Cons: difficult to navigate, have to spend a considerable amount of time finding a post that is relevant to you, too much written on one page.

Teachers.net(Networking) • http://teachers.net/ • Purpose: to provide teachers with the resources and support that they need in order to run a successful classroom • Pros: has a discussion board where teachers can either talk about something interesting that happened to them that day or ask advice on a problem, has a section where teachers can look for available jobs or tutoring positions or post an add for one of the two, also has suggestions for classroom projects. • Cons: not very organized, hard to navigate, you must take a long time looking through all of the lesson plans in order to find one relevant to you, not every lesson plan or classroom project is high-quality.

Enchanted Learning(Websites for Teachers, Parents, and Students) • http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html • Purpose: to provide educational materials to teachers and educational games to students to get them excited to learn. • Pros: the links that the website shares would be useful to smaller children, features many links that would assist children in learning a language, organizes material by subject, easy to navigate, great printable books. • Cons: mostly geared for younger children, some of the links were terrible (i.e. “college finder”), limited selection of topics, not set up in a very appealing way for children.

Scholastic(Websites for Teachers, Parents, and Students) • http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/learn.jsp • Purpose: to provide teaching resources and interactive learning activities for students. • Pros: had the a wide variety of activities, extremely well-organized (by grade, subject, subtopic, etc.), good lesson plans, many printable worksheets, had a section “New Teachers” to guide new teachers on everything from writing report cards to how to construct a school play, free. • Cons: this website was very useful for teachers, but the student’s sections was a little more difficult to navigate. I also feel like the children wouldn’t enjoy doing a majority of the activities on this website.

Smithsonian Education(Websites for Teachers, Parents, and Students) • http://www.smithsonianeducation.org/ • Purpose: to provide educators, families, and students with educational resources. • Pros: very simple to navigate, has options for educators, students, and families. For teachers: provides lesson plans that can be searched for based upon state standards or resources, has field trip ideas, and a list of seminars and events for educators. For students: educational games, lists events for kids. • Cons: subjects that lesson plans are provided for are limited, the games for the students are limited and not as fun as the other websites, doesn’t seem as if the website would be a lot of fun for the kids to explore.

Kaboose(Websites for Teachers, Parents, and Students) • http://www.kaboose.com/ • Purpose: to provide parents with craft, parenting, and recipe ideas for their children and also to provide interactive educational games for their children. • Pros: had a lot of cool ideas for parents to keep their children active, parenting advice, and suggestions out how to monitor their children’s behavior…all things that I feel will affect a child’s performance in school. • Cons: although the website has games for children I feel that the website is better for parents than it is for children. There were many other websites that children could use that I feel like they would get more out of by playing the games.

Starfall(Reading, Writing, and/or Math) • http://www.starfall.com/ • Purpose: to motivate children of all elementary ages to read with phonics • Pros: very easy to navigate, different difficulty levels so children can challenge themselves (learning the ABC’s to Chinese fables), various holiday themed readings, cute animations and sounds that will draw children in. • Cons: I have seen this website used in a 1st grade classroom and although the animations and sounds motivated some children to read others were just looking at the pictures and not concentrating on reading.

Storybird(Reading, Writing, and/or Math) • http://storybird.com/ • Purpose: to provide children with digital graphics that they will collaboratively use to create a story online • Pros: seems like it would motivate even the most “anti-writers” in the classroom to write a story because of the various graphics and format options that the website provides, children can read other student’s Storybirds to get ideas for their own stories, free • Cons: more complicated than the other websites to navigate, although it is easy start a Storybird I feel like it would be difficult to have the children create a Storybird on their own.

CoolMath(Reading, Writing, and/or Math) • http://www.coolmath.com/ • Purpose: to motivate students of kindergarten through high school age to learn mathematical concepts • Pros: games can be very useful for a parent to use to teach their child or for a high school student to use on his or her own, many topics covered, good strategies for teaching children math, accommodates various learning styles, can motivate children to learn, gets progressively more challenging as the student continues. • Cons: Extremely difficult to navigate, many irrelevant websites advertised all over the webpage, too much going on, many of the activities meant for younger children would require a parent or teacher to be near.

USA Capital Crunch(Geography) • http://www.kidsgeo.com/geography-games/usa-capitals-map-game.php • Purpose: To help students remember the capitals of each state. • Pros: Very simple and easy to understand, shows location of both the state and its capital on a map, can learn information about the capitals, such as population and weather, before playing the game. If repeated, the child will learn the capitals. Free • Cons: If you click the “CLUE” button all it does is write the name of the capital over the picture of the state, becomes monotonous, choices are limited to state capitals.

KidsKnowIt(All Subjects Covered) • http://www.kidsknowit.com/ • Purpose: to provide students with games that will assist them in learning about assorted subjects. • Pros: a wide variety of games that children can choose from based on category, links to children’s articles in biology, astronomy, math, and memory, a historical “fun fact” and “quote” of the day, the games will grab the children’s attention and you can become lost in playing them, with repetition the children will know the concept that the game was trying to teach them, educational movies, free • Cons: the website could be more organized than it is.

National Geographic for Kids(All Subjects Covered) • http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/ • Purpose: to supply children with fun and interactive games and activities that they can use to learn about a variety of topics. • Pros: Organized, a variety of activities that the children can choose from, various topics and subtopics, educational videos and stories, simple and easy-to-understand way of explaining current events. • Cons: although the students will learn something from participating in these activities I feel like it would be hard for a teacher to find an activity relevant to what he or she is teaching at the time.

BrainPop(All Subjects Covered) • http://www.brainpop.com/ • Purpose: to provide children and teachers with resources that will make learning a more fun and enjoyable experience. • Pros: I have seen this website used in a 4th Grade CTT science class as a re-enforcement of a topic that was taught earlier in the day. The kids really enjoyed it and recognized the characters, indicating that this website had been used before. This website also has features for other subjects and although it is mostly geared for students teachers can also use it to find academic standards. Very well organized. • Cons: It may not have a movie or resource that you are looking for to teach your students about a certain topic.

Wonder Rotunda(All Subjects Covered) • http://www.wonderrotunda.com/ • Purpose: is a virtual theme park that is supposed to arouse curiosity in students by allowing them to create a virtual self that travels around various topics. • Pros: really easy to understand, cool graphics, children would become engrossed in this website and have a lot of fun while learning a lot about different information, children can choose to travel through topics such as the human digestive system, space, nutrition, and the American government. • Cons: costs $45 a year or $12 a month, but that is the only drawback to this website.

My Opinion • I found this assignment to be very useful because it opened my eyes to all of the resources available to teachers and students on the internet that I never knew existed. Many of the websites that offered lesson plans had very creative and fun suggestions on how to get the children to effectively learn a concept…although you may have to take a little time to sort through all of the lessons. I also found the websites directed at the students to be extremely helpful. As previously mentioned, I sat in on a 4th Grade CTT class this year where the teacher had the students watch a short film on BrainPop after she taught a science lesson on immunity. The children loved the film and explained the topic from another point of view. These websites give great ideas on how to differentiate instruction and can also be used as tools to differentiate instruction in an inclusive and constructivist classroom. I can’t wait to share these websites with others and hopefully learn about some new websites that will be useful to me as an elementary school teacher!

Website Evaluations