Edith Bowen and Website Evaluation

Today we had the opportunity to go to Edith Bowen Elementary School and talk with a teacher and students about the technology they use in their classroom. This was really fun and helpful. I never thought of some of the things that this teacher used. He used I-pods computers and even a Nintendo WII in his classroom. I was really impressed with the young girl who showed me some of the programs they use on the computer. I never realized how useful some of the resources out there could be. We have always been taught that small group is a great way to learn and using these technologies is a great way to be able to do a lot of small group in your classroom. I was impressed with the excitement and the engagement that the teacher said was present in the room when the children were allowed to use the I-pods or the computers. I think that using these technologies in the classroom can be very helpful and I look forward to using them in the classroom.

Upon arrival back in the classroom we did website evaluations. We had four different forms that we used to evaluate 4 different types of websites. Although I feel like these forms were not very applicable to the websites we were looking up I feel that the Jericho Middle School Library Evaluation was my favorite. It was a quick easy checklist that helped me to really see a simple view of the website. I felt that all of the evaluations gave a brief overview but I think that there are better evaluations out there. It was hard to use such generic forms to evaluate the different varieties of websites. I think that there is probably a forms out there that would be more specific to each of the different types of websites we looked up.
I was very impressed with the NASA website. It passed almost every aspect of the evaluation. I never realized how important it is to make sure that the website is valid and that it has an author posted. I would have never thought to look for that in the websites. I was surprised to find out that most of the websites had an email link to send questions or concerns to but not a phone number or address. I think that this is becoming more and more common because of the increased use of technology in our world today. This evaluation helped me to learn what is important to look for on a website you are thinking about using in your classroom.
There is a lot of value to using a web site evaluation. It helps you to make sure that you are looking at every aspect of a website. It also helps you to look deeper into a website rather than just seeing something you like and assuming that it is good and credible. I think that website evaluation forms really open the eyes of a teacher and help them to understand the importance of finding good, useful and credible websites.
There are definitely times that I would not use a formal evaluation. I think that there are several sites that have parts to them that are good and useful and other parts that are not. If we use a website evaluation we might rule out the website in whole when really there is valuable resources on the website. I think that as a teacher we really need to look deep into the websites we are thinking about using and make sure that they are credible and that they will really be useful for our students. I think that we should not quickly overlook websites but instead dive deep into them and find those aspects that will be useful to us in our classrooms.