Spring 2009 EDUC 222 Web reviews in alphabetical order by student name:

Here, for your information, are the web site reviews from my educational computing students for  the Fall 2008 semester.

After studying a number of sites, the students wrote reviews for Web Sites they judged to be well designed and useful to educators.  Please feel free to forward these reviews to anyone who might be interested.

The reviews are organized alphabetically by student name.  To find what you want you can use your web browser to search all the reviews by keyword or character string.

The URLs  are "hot linked."

PBS Teachers
http://www.pbs.org/teachers/
Reviewed by Cassie Bowersock
Email: ceobowe01@moreheadstate.edu

This website is well known and highly critiqued, at the bottom there is a link that you can click on and it will list and explain their website in detail. PBS teachers provide teachers with ideas, guidelines they can follow, and just tips that they can perform in the classroom. You are given links on the left handed side that provides you to choose a subject such as, the arts, health and fitness, math, reading and language arts, science and tech, and social studies. If you click on any one of these links it brings you to a site where you are then supposed to click on an age group, and a topic. For example, I chose K-2 and music, it brings me to things I can use in the classroom based on my choice, like the kazoo, or different activities that can be done.

I personally chose this website, because not only does it provide a very unique guide and resource for teachers, but it gives you options of grades and subjects. You are presented with step-by-step processes to use in the classroom. This website also has a television show, and I personally watched this as a young kid. I would recommend not only this website but the television show as well.

KBears

http://www.kbears.com

Reviewed by Cassie Bowersock

Email: ceobowe01@moreheadstate.edu

KBears is an educational websites for kids, and also provides a link for parents, and teachers. It showcases a number of games ranging from word games to math games. There is a certain link that I particularly noticed that was neat in a since of I haven’t seen a lot of programs that provide it, was an A to Z animal game. You can either click on a letter, or you can specify what type of animals you want to look at, it gave four options, dinosaurs, ocean, Kb Farm, or A-Z. A to Z just provides you student or child with a list of the alphabet and they click a letter and it gives you the names of animals that start with that letter, after you click on an animal it teaches you about this animal, and gives multiple pictures of this animal. This website seems to have gotten a lot of great reviews by other teachers and parents, and does provide an opportunity for your kids to discover some things they can’t see in the classroom.

I liked this website, because it gave you more educational options, not like your traditional blow up something after you solve a math problem. I found this website to be enjoyable. I have a niece who I let play, and she enjoyed the animal option, and we sat for a long time and just learned about animals and looked at the pictures. It also gives teachers and parents a link which I thought was very different, and very handy.

Kids Know It Network

http://www.kidsknowit.com/

Reviewed by Cassie Bowersock

Email: ceobowe01@moreheadstate.edu

Kids Know It, in my thoughts, is a website that lets kids choose what they want to learn about. It would also give teachers an easy way to find something on the subject they want kids to focus on. Subjects range from spelling to astronomy. It provides games, facts, and interesting information on each subject. From what I took from this, this website is a bigger website that showcases subjects and provides different websites that you can go to for these particular subjects as well. At the bottom of the page it gives you a Google definition of what the subject is, and even other websites you can go to, with an interesting fact box too, very interesting, very fun for kids.

I liked this website, because it didn’t limit you to their information, not only did they give you very good information on each subject, and numerous games, but it gave you a list at the bottom of other websites on the subject you were looking for.  Out of all the websites I looked at this was my favorite.

Math Drills
http://www.math-drills.com/
Reviewed by Bradley Cannon
mailto:Bkcann01@moreheadstate.edu

This is a website created to give teachers and parents the opportunity to use over six thousand different math worksheets.  These worksheets can be used to master and practice a certain math skill. There are many different kinds of worksheets provided on this web site. They include worksheets that help students practice and master geometry, multiplication, division, and many other different operations. The website has a good layout because it allows teachers or parents to find worksheets by clicking on the link that describes the function.  An example of this is if a teacher is looking for multiplication worksheets, all they have to do is click on the multiplication tab and it brings down a list of many worksheets.

I chose this website because of the layout of the website. If you are a math teacher or a parent that needs to give your students practice on different math functions, all you have to do is go to this site and click the tab and chose one of the many worksheets they provide.

Teacher Planet
http://www.teacherplanet.com/
Reviewed by Bradley Cannon
mailto:Bkcann01@moreheadstate.edu

This website provides educators with a lot of different tools. This website provides links to websites that could be very helpful to educators. There are links that allow educators to create their own worksheets, give ideas for lesson plans, and games they can implement into their teaching. It is laid out very well with tabs that act as links to what the tab describes.  This web site isn’t just for one subject. It gives different ideas and things for just about every subject. It even provides a certificate tab that educators can use to reward their students for meeting and achieving goals.

I chose this website because it is a website that has materials on it that relates to just about every subject. Many of the websites that I have looked at are subject related, but this website contains things for most subjects. I also chose it because it has a good layout and provides educators with many different tools.

A to Z Teacher Stuff
http://www.atozteacherstuff.com/
Reviewed by Bradley Canno
mailto:Bkcann01@moreheadstate.edu

This website provides a lot of different things for each subject area. It provides teachers with themes, lesson plans, worksheet creators, printable worksheets, advice on how to deal with situations, and many other things. It is designed like many of the other education worksheets that I have viewed over the last few days. It also has a forum on this website where you can talk to other teachers from around the world. This can be helpful for finding new ideas and for advice about things. Overall, this is a very good website because it has so many different things on it that can help educators in the classroom.

I chose this website because it has many different tools on it. It is probably the best website that I have reviewed due to the fact that it has a lot of tools on it. It also has a great and easy to use layout. Another thing that I really liked about the website is the forum that it has on their because you can talk to educators from many different places.

National Gallery of Art: NGA Kids The Art Zone
http://www.nga.gov/kids/kids.htm
Reviewed by Ashley Jump
Aljump01@moreheadstate.edu

This website is presented by The National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. This site provides a place for children to create and learn. While at the same time supplying teachers and/or parents with any needed information on art backgrounds and site updates.  The site has activities that allow children to learn how to use a number of different genres of art, genres ranging from collage creations to photo editing and manipulation. While at the same time nurturing their creative side. Also shown are images of real pieces of artwork, along with a way to gain access to the background information on that piece.

This is a great way to help students to understand how some aspects of the art world work. While at the same time, it still let them flex their creativity. It is stretches across art genres giving a taste of each to the student, allowing choice, but is detailed enough that it’s not glossing over most of the larger features of the genre.

Dinosaurs for Kids
http://www.kidsdinos.com/
Reviewed by Ashley Jump
Aljump01@moreheadstate.edu

Dinosaurs for kids is a part of the Kids Know It Network, a website that provides links to other educational websites. This site in particular, provides information and interactive activities on numerous types of dinosaurs. Supplying anything from the name of a particular dinosaur to the area of the world they were found in. It is information that can be used by adults and children alike, and is provided in a way that is easy to understand. The site also has numerous games and activities that are there to teach and reinforce the information provided to a person on the site. The activities include anything from dinosaur flashcards to categorizing dinosaurs by its characteristics.

This is a great site for dinosaur lovers and students who are new to the subject matter alike! This site provides the important and necessary facts about a number of different dinosaurs in a fun and educational way. Using a combination games teach you the facts or reinforce those facts.

Count Us In
http://www.abc.net.au/countusin/default.htm
Reviewed by Ashley Jump
Aljump01@moreheadstate.edu

This is an Australian Broadcasting Corporation website, dedicated to teaching preschool aged children how to count, and apply counting in possible scenarios. The website has a choice of 15 games, which all focus on either teaching a child the basics or the application of counting. There are also downloadable game and additional activities available for parents/teachers to use. The downloadable games are supplied in case a parent or teacher does not want a child on the Internet itself, or want to have easy access for multiple uses. There are also ideas for other activities provided to enhance what a child learns from the website.

A great way to give a child a jumpstart in counting and math! The website it simplistic yet is still able to educate a child in a fun way. The games and additional activities the site provides cover different levels of math from simple counting to volume, and so much more in between.

Room 108
http://www.netrover.com/~kingskid/108.html
Reviewed by Shelley Fannin
mailto: srfann01@moreheadstate.edu

Room 108 is a website which focuses directly on education of primary students. This serves as a great resource for primary kids and teachers. There are over 400 pages of free educational games, animated stories, math, science, social studies and much more. The site contains complete animated story books and picture books, with descriptions of each. There are many art games as well, allowing kids to play shape/color match games, dress up and kaleido-scope. A “teacher-store” is also included in this site, where printing supplies, font blocks, worksheet creators, flashcards, and other learning programs are sold. Teachers can also find many free worksheets here as well, including graphing, double-digit math addition, and personalized learning contracts just to name a few.

This site is ideal for primary teachers because it offers many fun ways of teaching young children who need to be interested in what they are learning. It offers many resources of free worksheets and assignments, and is also a kid friendly site. It is composed of bright colors and music, in order to capture a child’s attention and help them focus on the task at hand.

Discovery Education Classroom Resources
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/index.html
Reviewed by Shelley Fannin
mailto: srfann01@moreheadstate.edu

This site offers multimedia, interactive video options to the teacher and classroom. The website is linked to The Learning Channel (TLC) and The Discovery Channel, which offers teachers the opportunity to record the specific programming and use it interactively with the lesson plan. This website offers lesson plan libraries for teachers, showing hundreds of previously written lesson plans, for teachers by teachers. Students can explore African art, culture, and health, as well as visit NASA and be challenged with WebMath and Brain Boosters all in the same day. The site is familiar to most students and offers educational procedures that can not only be seen on the computer screen, but with videos and programs that correspond with the lesson on television.

The Discovery website can not only be used for primary education. It is a well-known educational resource that can help teachers of all different grades and ages. The website teaches of many different contents and gives teachers lesson plans to follow that have been posted previously by other teachers. This website also allows teachers to produce free puzzles and word searches, as well as providing the teacher with access to professional development through online/in-person training, and even the Discovery Educator Network.

Sesame Street
http://www.sesamestreet.org/home
Reviewed by Shelley Fannin
mailto: srfann01@moreheadstate.edu

The Sesame Street website is one that is perfect for young children who are just beginning school. The site is designed with bright colors and familiar characters, in order to grab the child’s attention and make them feel comfortable while helping to teach them basic math and reading skills. Free games that the website contains focus on many different early learning subjects like numbers, thinking skills, getting along with others, alphabet, and creativity. Teachers may browse through all of the games, choosing what subjects he or she wants to look at. Also, the website has printable finger puppets and alphabet worksheets that teachers may use in order to further their students learning.

These games not only help young students to learn academically, they also help them cope and learn how to interact with others socially. Young children see familiar characters they can relate to, which automatically allows them to feel more comfortable in a new place or situation. The free worksheets and games help the teacher to carry on the concept away from the computer desk, excelling the learning capabilities of the website.

http://www.abcteach.com
Alison Fisher
mailto: alisonfisher93@yahoo.com
Source of content is teachers, reviewed by several teachers

This website is designed for teachers of all grades. There are resources here for teachers of elementary through high school. This is a site you must pay to join, but it would be worth the money. It is $40 per year or $70 for a two year membership.

This website will give you worksheets to help with reading, math, theme units, and resources for teaching on thinking green and foreign language along with many others. There are also resources included for parents who home school.

The website is easy to navigate and will give you any information you need on a wide variety of subjects. It would definitely be worth the $40.

I picked this website because it has all the information you would need no matter what grade you are teaching.

Although I am not a member I was able to look at some sample pages and I was very impressed with the way it was laid out and so easy to understand. I would consider this website as a teacher for all the valuable information that is so readily available. It would make it nice if you needed something last minute because it is so easy to access.

http://www.schoolexpress.com
Alison Fisher
mailto: alisonfisher93@yahoo.com

Reviewed and included in the top 100 websites for teachers

This website includes a lot of information for all grade levels. It is easy to navigate and has a lot of relevant information.

One of the best parts of this website is that there is a lot of free information. Most of the websites cost to gain access to all parts of it, but this one has information you can access for no cost.

It includes information to help to students learn about history, math, reading, spelling as well as other subjects.

This website includes a lot of useful information for teachers of all grades to use. Definitely a website I would want to use as a teacher.

I picked this website because of the useful information it includes. This website includes information for all grade levels and is easy to navigate. There is a tab for all subjects and all material so it is very easy to find what you are looking for.

This is a great website to use if you are in a hurry looking for some last minute information on a particular subject.

http://www.education-world.com
Alison Fisher
mailto: alisonfisher93@yahoo.com

Not reviewed

This is a very quick and easy website to use. This website includes information on a variety of subjects. Everything from lesson plans to school issues. There is also a place for educators to go to that will help them develop their own website for use in the classroom.

There is also a section that is devoted to a lesson plan of the day. As well as a section that is devoted to different games to help teach a certain subject. The best part of this website is that it is entirely free. There is no cost associated with using any of the information they include.

I picked this website due to the valuable information and the ease in which an educator can use it. It is a website that educators can go to and not only get information for their students but for themselves as well. It would be a website I would use in my career as a teacher.

Apple Learning Interchange
http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/
Reviewed by Bryan Quillen
mailto: BryanQ_15@yahoo.com

The Apple Learning interchange is a website solely for educators. When you come to this website, you’re prompted to enter an e-mail address to create an account. Once this has been done, you have access to lessons planned by educators across the country and the opportunity to communicate with these educators. Collaborations are also possible with this website. Not only does it offer great help for any type of educator, it offers all of this in an easy to navigate web page. Everything on the site from the collaboration links to the podcasts and videos is labeled and categorized to ease to strain of the navigator.

I chose this website because a teacher I admire recommended this to me for when I come into the field. This isn’t just a website that offers tips for education; it offers help from other educators who have been in the game a lot longer than a beginner in the field. Regardless of your experience with the field, this site offers benefits to everyone. The site is constantly updated by educators and Apple administrators alike.

Read Write Think
http://www.readwritethink.org/
Reviewed by Bryan Quillen
mailto: BryanQ_15@yahoo.com

Read Write Think offers resources for English and language arts teachers. The simple layout offers tabs you can click to lead you towards lessons, web resources, students materials, and more. Also, there are many other specific options to choose from at the bottom of the page. The page also offers highlights of the newest materials added to the site. The link to the lessons leads you to a wide array of plans that are organized by title. These lessons are also grade specific, dated, and provide a short abstract explaining what you’ll get if you pick it. The student materials offer links to websites and tools that the educators can give to the students to offer help and instruction for the lessons that they hand out. Overall the webpage is designed almost flawlessly to help English educators with lessons.

This webpage deals with my major and future career plans. I like the flow of the webpage and the ease of access it provides for everyone who visits. The webpage has many sponsors that keep the site constantly updated and new so there are always new materials for the people who seek aide. Not only does this page offer great help, it offers links to contact the people over the page and links to learn about what they stand for. I feel like this page is people friendly, and that means a lot to someone going into the field where the curriculum is constantly changing.

Remote Access
http://remoteaccess.typepad.com/
Reviewed by Bryan Quillen
mailto: BryanQ_15@yahoo.com

Remote Access is a blog written by Clearance Fisher, a teacher of fifteen years and an avid supporter of the twenty first century methods of teaching. In Fisher’s blog, he discusses ways to improve classrooms, redefine literacy, and shares his presentations and articles. From the main page of this site, you can read about Fisher himself, contact him via e-mail, and be linked directly to any of his posts that interests you. Not only do you get posts showing how he is handling his class or managing assignments, but you get a very celebrated teacher’s point of view from the other side of the desk. Topics such as what tools are used in schools, racial diversity, and even reflective posts are available for people to read.

Anybody who enjoys other perspectives on education could get something from this website. Methods, suggestions, or just another person’s opinion can all be attained here. I find this man’s philosophy in the classroom to be one that I would like to model, so his blog is exactly what I would read. This isn’t an average “Read and get assignments” webpage. This is an actual blog that a teacher posts on regularly to let people in on his experiences. It’s different and very helpful. I enjoy it and I think anybody who likes incorporating technology into their class will too.

Discovery Education
http://discoveryeducation.com/
Reviewed by Pam Strassel
mailto: Psstra01@moreheadstate.edu

Discovery has created a very creative recourse for not only children from K-8th grade but for teachers and parents as well. Home Resources is for kids to pick and subject and it provides many short educational videos to show a child how to do everything from simple addition and place value, to learning about the election process. This website also has a large section on the development of science fair projects, helping from picking a topic all the way to the judge’s criteria. Discovery also provides information different “adventures” where kids are allowed to pick an international destination and then actually go on these trips.

If you’re not a typical teacher and you like to challenge and have fun with your kids this website will benefit you, it provides lesson plans, helpful guide to making puzzles to go with any lesson. This website lets kids explore in so many other ways other than reading from a book.

Poptropica FunBrain
http://www.funbrain.com/
Reviewed by Pam Strassel
mailto: Psstra01@moreheadstate.edu

Funbrain is an exciting, fun website directed toward preschool to about 2nd grade. This website provides information and resources for teachers and parents. Parents get help for everything from LD tips to how to manage money. Teachers are provided with standards finder and creating quizzes online. While this website is a great resource for teachers and parents children really get the most, from this site everything from reading books/comics to playing helpful, educational games teaching problem solving, reading, math, and much more. Kids also get homework help like making flashcards.

This website not only attracts kids but when they are playing they don’t even know they are learning. The playground games teach an incredible amount of problem solving and critical thinking. The arcade games also provide education but you can also set levels to challenge children. This website is a great resource.

Teacher Planet
http://teacherplanet.com/calendar/calendar.php?op=cal&month=4&year=2009
Reviewed by Pam Strassel
mailto: Psstra01@moreheadstate.edu

This website is mainly directed towards all teachers. It is mainly a resource site proving everything from explaining teaching skills to lesson plans, to a calendar with ideas and special events on it. There are ideas for theme units to give children a wide range of projects and information on a certain unit like “Wind and Water Energy.” It has monthly featured books directed towards teachers. The best part about this website is, Teacher Tools, a collection of preparation tools, reference tools, search tools, and even financial tools. This website also provides an online grade book and a language translator.

This website is very helpful for all teachers and the best part about it is that it’s free! There are so many ideas for teachers, newsletters, worksheets, and so much more. Any teacher would benefit from this even if it is reading up on “News for Teachers.”