Website Evaluation

There are five main questions to ask yourself when trying to evaluate a website: the five w's : who, what, where, when, why (created by Kathy Schrock-- I'm practicing upholding copyright laws!) These questions are very good to ask yourself because not all websites are equally useful. Some may have incorrect information on them; may falsely claim to be unbiased; may represent the information in a confusing way. Especially if you want to use technology and websites in your classroom instruction, you don't want to be infront of the students googling "polynomials" for the first time and then just randomly clicking on links (unless random searching is what you're teaching, of course). You will want to know ahead of time which websites are useful, accessible, and represent the information both accurately and clearly. I really did not have any idea how many useless/less valuable websites there are for math. Useless because they are targeted for high school or college level students. Nowadays it is almost always better to get an interactive, animated website rather than just dry, typed up notes/walk-through of procedures. Another reason you want to check out websites for evaluation before telling links to students is that many for education are not free!? So much on the internet is free, but many organizations put together a huge database for teachers but you need to pay for subscriptions. Also- if you have a wireless network at your school and want to show sites, many are restricted as soon as you get to school because of the board of education's restrictions. This is why it was useful in class when we were talking about education-y alternatives to you-tube (on which at home you can view really helpful, awesome animations of a variety of math topics).