After reviewing the discussion on evaluating websites, I created a “Web Page Evaluation Rubrik” (see below). It is a composite of many of the suggestions in the Web Site Evaluation discussion forum.   So it is against this criteria that I measured the Web sites I looked at.

I observed that the criteria for evaluating educational web sites are different than evaluating all others.   This doesn't surprise me.   I also observed that the criteria and priorities (relative weight) for evaluating student web sites are different than for evaluating teacher resources sites. These differences lie mainly in the importance (priorities) of any set of criteria from one environment to another.   For instance, authoritative content may be a higher priority when evaluating teacher resource web sites, and navigational ease may be a higher priority when evaluating web pages targeted to young students in K-3

While some of these criteria overlap, characteristically, they can each be observed and “measured.”   So on a totally subjective scale of 1 to 10, ten being the best, I rated the FETC web site, and the Top Ten Technology Strategies web site.

On Bette's suggestion, I reviewed the FETC 2005 conference web site

i reviewed some of the speakers at this year's conference, including Cheryl Lempke of Metiri.

I reviewed a pdf presentation (PPT) 1-7 Cyber Cafe. It is similar to a proposal I made some years ago for cruise training - defining the ideal internet cafe.

I thought the presentation would be relevant to multi-cultural learning, but I was wrong.

I explored presentation handouts 1-9 "Copyright: Your Questions Answered" (web pages) for Copyright law Resources for Educators and Librarians.

I think it would be a useful site for Michele. The main site points to materials/guides that can be purchased. It appears at first that this site is not much more than an advertisement for the authors book on Copyright Law, but the web site includes a wonderful Resource Page, linking to many excellent Copyright-related web sites - http://beckercopyright.com/id11.html

Like horrizontal hyper-texted navigation, the copyright site resource page led me to one great resource after another. Many of these resource sites were academic. Some created rubriks for copyright rules.

Followed presentation (1-24) leads from the Florida Department of Education "Florida Knowledge network." I wondered whether the LI PBS station could be our "FKN."

I followed session (2-3) Top Ten Technology Classroom Stragegies (2-3) and reviewed the

The anatomy of a hyperlinked journey

From Bette's email reference to FETC, I went to Google and proceeded: first to the FETC Conference web site and then to virtual handouts.

From the FETC Conference Virtual Handouts page (http://www.fetc.org/fetc2005/conference/index.cfm)

I went to session 2-3 Top Ten Technology Classroom Strategies David Davis (http://www.fdlrstech.com/)

This then led me to Handouts from Past Presentations where I found a organized rubrik containing hundreds of lesson plans and other technology teaching resources.

I followed the links to FCAT Science and Mathematics curriculum. There I discovered an incredible directory of teaching resources organized by grades and subjects. I followed one of the links to a lesson on Algebra basics, from the Gizmo Collection at explorelearning It was wonderful. It was free. It was very professional, it was accurate, it was good education, it was good use of computer technology, it was simple, it needed slight direction. It opened yet another door to tremendous resources. Each link opens a new world. It is easy to be overwhelmed.

http://www.fetc.org/fetc2005/conference/session_presenter_detail.cfm?ID2=622

When evaluating a web site, often the site itself may be mediocre at best, but it may have one aspect of the site that makes it particularly valuable.  This has been the case with a few web sites I visited on my FETC tour.  Like the Copyright link from session 1-9, which was itself basically an advertisement for a book, but contained an outstanding resource page with authoritative and robust links to many outstanding resources dealing with all aspects of Copyright issues.

While I found many links broken especially by the third level hypertexted navigation, many of the pages I visited  were nonetheless valuable.  Often web pages contain specific information that is valuable and uniquely available at that site.  So one aspect in evaluating a web site is the value of its content in the context of the visitor's perspective.

Below are my self-assigned values (1 - 10) for two web sites I reviewed.  Beneath my criteria scores, is a rubrik of all the criteria I collected from the EDT812 Discussion on Web page evaluation.