Evaluating Instructional Websites

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With the advent of world Wide Webs and huge amount of information that's contained there, students need to be able to evaluate a web page for design, navigability, authority, bias, citation, dates, contents and links, handicapped and relevance. The ability to evaluate information is an important skill in this information era. Accordingly the most important factor when evaluating the websites is your search, your needs. What we are using the web for? Sports? Entertainment? Or Academic work? Therefore, as teachers we must be able to evaluate the quality of the website we will be bringing into our classroom. Good educational websites have certain criteria the teacher must consider before introducing them to the students. Many websites found on Internet can be of low educational value and shouldn't be used in a classroom setting. If the educational website to be used in the classroom, the content should be without particular commercial, political, gender or racial bias, the teacher must address the bias in a classroom. In order to help the reader understands how to apply the given criteria, I navigated the following the websites and chose the first one as an example:-u Http://www.funschool.com
u Http://www.edchange.org
u Http://www.education.gov
Funschool.com is an educational website targets kids from pre-school age to grade six. ThePrimary purpose for this site is teaching children different subjects, such as Mathematics,Geography, Science, and Ecology. The website has recently updated. For my personal opinion, I like this website and I recommend it for class use. The funschool.com is well organized and it is easy to navigate through the pages and links are relevant to the topics and clearly marked, colored and easily take the user to the new page. The site’s content is appropriate for the targeted kids as well as the texts, graphics and the language use, and free from spelling mistakes, grammatical and syntax errors. Funschool.com is also free from commercial, political and gender bias. I did not notice any option for handicapped to help them easily access the website. In general funschool.com is very for suitable for six grade students because it includes a lot of games, coloring and doing activities suitable for lower grade students.References:
u Http://www.funschool.com
u Http://www.edchange.org
u Http://www.education.gov
u Http://www.memebers.fortune.com
u Http://www.usask.ca/education/coursework