Educational Website Evaluation

For our website evaluation assignment, we were to look at one educational website in the age range that we will be teaching, so I evaluated a website that targeted Elementary School students. We were supposed to evaluate the site based on its author, publishing body, biases, accuracy, currency, design, and accessibility.

I had very little experience evaluating websites before this assignment. I would chose websites for my own study or entertainment based on a length of the text, and whether the graphics were modern and up to date. I also tended to stay away from sites that had a lot of clutter. I never paid much attention to the author or the publishing body unless an instructor made that part of the assignment in researching for a paper or project.

After completing this assignment, I feel much better equipped to evaluate a website. I now know what I should look for when deciding whether or not to recommend a website to my peers or my students.

One thing I definitely would have considered in evaluating a website before this assignment is accuracy. If I found a fact that was not true or found many spelling and grammar errors, I would immediately stop using it. If they did not get the information right on one part, then how do I know if any of it is correct?

From this assignment, I've realized that it's important to learn about the author. It's good to question if he or she is qualified or experienced in the field. I wouldn't want to recommend educational games designed by an someone who has never worked with children and doesn't know anything about what's developmentally appropriate for them. Also being affiliated with a university adds credibility to the author's qualifications.

Knowing who's publishing the website is also important to consider. This is something I probably wouldn't have ever looked at before this assignment. But a professional website is much more credible than someone's personal site. It also probably wouldn't hurt to do a little research about the publishing body to see if they publish a lot of educational sites.

Accessibility is another aspect that I wouldn't have considered without this assignment. And I cannot just consider how accessible the site is to me. What's easy for me to access might not be as easily found by a class of kindergartners or first graders.

Overall, this assignment has been a great help to me. I believe it will be a good skill to have when trying to find websites that I can suggest to my students.