Site Evaluation
During our initial face-to-face meeting, we took some time to list some of the communities we belong to. Each one has characteristics and features that are unique to the group. The language and norms of the groups have different levels of understanding depending on our level of involvement in each of these communities. These “layers” of knowledge allow the information to be available for users of varying expertise within the community. Think about the different “layers” of understanding among your students as you teach a lesson. The concept is similar. Some students can go deeper than others. Information that is available to multitudes of people must also satisfy this component of providing information of varying degrees of interest and knowledge.
For our purposes, we will concentrate on education related communities.
There are numerous sites dedicated to sharing ideas among the teaching community. Standards and accountability issues are at the forefront of much of the discussion among educators. Here are a few sites to visit that offer resources to teachers who are looking for more information on standards, as well as lessons that incorporate them.
Los Angeles County Office of Education (LACOE) http://teams.lacoe.edu/
From Putnam Valley School District in New York: http://edStandards.org/Standards.html
These sites are designed for a specific audience who have specific purposes. Other “education portals” provide more general resources for teachers to access. Here are three that are well known:
Kathy Schrock’s Guide for Educators http://school.discovery.com/schrockguide/index.html
TeachNet http://www.teachnet.com/
California Learning Resource Network www.clrn.org
Questions to think about: We know that the intended audience of each site is educators.
Pick one of the above sites and complete the following. Your responses should be brief and to the point. Please post your responses in the comments section.
1. What are some of the layers within this group? Do these sites reflect different layers within the education community? (For example: grade-level specific? subject specific? teachers only, or are there areas for other communities?)
2. Find examples of language and terminology that is community specific.
3. Look for some of the design components that assist the user in using the site. Connect your reading in our course readings to what you see in this site. Please use references (page numbers) from our sources.
4. Who would find the site useful?
5. What is your overall impression of the site?
1. This site reflects various grade levels although there is no quick way to search lets say by K-2, 3-5, middle school and algebra and beyond. They do give different subjects a specific search mechanism.
2. Take 5 and activities that you can do to fill 5 minutes of teach time.
Brainteasers, Lesson Plans, classroom décor and bulletin board makeup.
3. Look for some of the I am not sure on this question as this site takes a lot of what the book by Krug suggests in not cluttering the users. It gives me a few words to find what I am looking for. The options are titled correctly and all the buttons are “clickable”. Krug suggest that the items we are looking at should be not make the user think and this site was easy for me to navigate without needless words, Chapter 5.
4. Multiple Subject Teachers in the primary grades is main target audience for this sight.
5. Since I am a single subject teacher I see how it could be limited to users like me. It seems to have great tools for multiple subject teachers. I really like the bulletin boards and how they are on the related page for each topic it makes a better tools if you can read others opinions right on the same page without having to look elsewhere.
I explored Kathy Schrock’s site and found it to be somewhat user friendly. I think this site would be great if you knew what you were looking for. I was just playing around and fit a bit overwhelmed by all the subject categories. This site had multiple layers in terms of being both grade and subject specific. It went a step further and you could make your search specific to a particular category in a subject. I think it is mostly aimed at teachers given the vocabulary pertaining to the lsson plans like…
2. Perfect sagway into question 2. The vocabulary dealing with the lesson plans is particular familiar to teachers such as objective, procedures, evaluation and the ever important standards.
3. There was a lot going on with the homepage. You could click here and you could click there. Not all of the words were hyperlinks and someone who is not text savy might have difficulty. As Krug suggests people should not have to think and rather just click. I think this site may be a bit challenging for those who just want to click as Krug says.
4. I think this site would appeal to teachers of elementay, middle and high school students given the breadth of material.
5. I think this site is nice but again a little daunting. I think if I am going to use it I am going to have to spend some time clicking around and aghast, thinking. Again, this site would not necessarily be a quick easy reference place.
I evaluated Kathy Schrock’s site. Here are my responses to the questions.
1. Whereas this site promises to be specific to educators, it is not. While there is information for k-12 and college educators, there is also a section called “Kidstuff” for kids, and a “Shopping” section which is useful to the general public. So, there are many layers, including kids, teachers, and the general public.
2. Following are references I found that are community specific, where the community is educators: “Fry’s Readability Graph,” “Assessments and Rubrics,” “Bulletin Board Ideas,” “WebQuest,”
3. The site uses many techniques suggested by Krug. The supposed purpose of the web site is immediately identifiable by the tagline (Krug, p.101, 103-106). The site also uses web navigation conventions (Krug, p.60-61). There are clear signs delineating the parts of the home page: SUBJECT ACCESS, TEACHER HELPERS, SEARCH TOOLS, SCHROCKGUIDESTUFF. The website uses “persistent navigation”, so that the same navigation elements are on every page in the site. (Krug, p.62).
4. I think that educators would find this site useful, as it compiles a lot of information into one site. Although there is material for others such as kids, they aren’t likely to come here, considering that the tagline says the site is a guide for educators.
5. If this site were simplified, I’d be more inclined to use it. While there is a lot of useful information, the “noise” bothers me. There is way too much information on the home page. Some things could be separated and placed on another page–such as “search tools”—instead of crowding them onto the home page. The Schrockguidestuff should be deleted, or placed on another page with a link on the home page. Also, some information is redundant. For instance, the tagline, “Kathy Schrock’s Guide For Educators” doesn’t need to be there twice.
I appreciate your comments, and, for your additional information, the site has been available for 11 years and has been refined to reflect the use of the thousands of educators who use it each month.
The front page includes the subject categories in the left-hand column, and the my links to the best search tools on the front page. (There is a subject page with many more, to allow the educator the choices they need.) In addition, the shopping and kids pages are there to expose teachers to these sites, to include in links pages they make for students or for their professional growth.
The right-hand column includes the content I have created– the slide shows that I have given over the years, the bulletin board information, the yearly calendars, the assessment data, readability information, etc. All of these items have been added at the request of teachers over the years. I check the traffic on the pages each month, and, if a section is not being used, it is deleted. Everything you see is consistently used heavily by teachers each month.
I disagree that these things should be separated onto separate pages. A good Web page includes broad categories right up front in order to help the user decide if the page includes the type of information they need.
Kathy
http://www.jefflevy.com
http://www.microsoft.com
http://www.atomiclearning.com
This site at first glance looked very slim but by using the buttons I found that the site was easy to use and provided many layers including grade and subject specific as well as private members/teachers only areas. As expected in K-12 many acronyms appear on this site as well as terms like standards and curriculum etc. The design component tat sticks out most that follow the reading are that each tabs and tags which are clearly identifiable (Krug 101). This site would be very useful for teachers seeking resources and variation in their lessons. There are literally an infinite supply including; PPT’s, doc’s, plans, and weblinks. I believe this to be very good site, but I would have to address a specific need before I could really be fair. But, I check the section for algebra and thought it was fairly well stocked.
Dear Ms. Schrock,
In making my comments to my classmates, I was merely following suggestions of the award winning author, Steve Krug recommended in his book, “Don’t Make Me Think; A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.” This is required reading for our class.
I know sorry….the clrn site; California Resources Network at http://WWW.clrn.org
CLRN Site Evaluation
CLRN homepage design layout follows good basic design principles. The choice of colors is well blended so that they are pleasing to the eye. Page Title is properly placed in the upper left with a statement of purpose for the site. The site has usability features such as, resizable text, colored links, and the use of white space. All important content is placed above the page break. The drop-down list menu bar is clearly labeled and contains links to connecting site pages. The page layout is consistent throughout the site. The resource tab contains several search options, subjects offered, and a video of how to search the site. The about us tab contain a site map.
The home page defines the terminology used throughout the pages such as, (ELR,) Electronic Learning Resources, (WILs) Web Information Links, and (ELARs) Electronic Learning Assessment Resources.
This site would be most useful to teachers, students, parents, and anyone interested in K-12 subject material.
I would rate it as a good site. It is easy to navigate through the information and the layout is straight forward, not over whelming.
I looked at Kathy’s site. This site seemed to have layers upon layers and more layers. I am not sure how someone would organize this much information and not make it look crowded. I did notice she had a second home page called a retro version site. There was more white space and I immediately liked it more just by first impression. I did not like navigating it as well. I thought that was an interesting idea that first impression and easy navigation may not always match.
Specific language I saw (which is hard to find because it is so familiar to me) is ELA, rubric and phonemic awareness
This site is crowded but every item can be clicked and leads you to more specific options. While the site did require me to pause and take in all I was viewing, once I understood the organization everything was organized logically and became easy to navigate. Just as Krug talks about, The site did not make me think about how to find what I need. (Chapter 5). Other technigues mentioned by Krug found in this web site are a tagline web navigation conventions and persistent navigation.
I would find the site useful as would most elementary teachers. I do like sites that more clearly separate grade levels but this site is so full of so many things I found great things.
I like the site. It references so many other sites and I think if I was looking for a addition game online I might search here before google.
I viewed the site teachnet.com. I found this site to be very subject specific and mostly teacher specific but also had a small section for parents. The only real language that I could find that was community specific was the use of the term ESL. The language was very simple and would be easy for anyone to use.
Krug talks about web users scanning web pages to find the information you are looking for (Krug 22). I think a person using this site could scan and find the area they are looking for quickly. Although once they find the subject they are looking for they will be disappointed to find that the subjects are not broken into clearly defined areas such as by grade levels (Krug 36).
This site may be useful for teachers but really did not have that many lesson plan ideas. The hope is that teachers go to the site and share their ideas but it seems that not many teachers have done that. Since the lesson plans are not broken up by grade level or age I could see a teacher not wanting to waste the time trying to find out if the lesson title worked with his or her students.
My overall impression of this site is that it is lacking in information. The site was easy to navigate but needed more lesson plans and that they should be broken up by grade level or at least say what grade level they would work with in the title.
1. On Kathy Schrock’s site, you can search by subject or by teacher helper sites. There is also a blog and educators network to get updated ideas, insights, and current events within teaching.
2. Some examples of terminology that is community specific are:
WebQuest Information, Assessment & Rubrics, Literature & ELA, educator network
3. Kathy’s site does convey the focus and message of its site. In Krug’s book he mentions the importance of conveying the big picture, which I believe she does well with her welcome blurb at the top. (p.98) I do notice that her home page is a bit confusing as to where to start. As for answering the three questions with confidence that Krug uses as a test for navigability on the homepage, I cannot answer with confidence. (p. 106)
4. I believe this site is useful for teachers and student alike. There are many tools and resources that are reasonably accessible to them.
5. Visually, the site is clean and easy to read. The colors are not overbearing and the titles are easy to read. I also like how the navigation tools remain the same on each page. I do think the home page is a little confusing. What is the focus for visitors? There seems to be several places to begin, which made it difficult to navigate.