Another one bites the dust...

Well another assignment done and dusted!  Submitted at 12:30am, due at midnight - hopefully I won't lose marks for lateness.  This one was on website evaluation criteria and was to be written as a report with dot points, not an essay.  I found it so difficult!  Essays are a breeze for me because I know exactly what is expected, but this sort of thing was another story.  I have found the word counts in the last couple of assignments extremely difficult to adhere to.  If you are writing a policy or a critical analysis, for goodness sakes supervisors, give us a decent word count to work with.  I know I went well over in this one but as it was late at night and I had to work the next day,  well... you know how it goes. 

I must admit I learnt an awful lot through this assignment though.  I also got very frustrated with a lot of writers of website evaluation criteria. It seemed that none of them, even when supposedly catering for educators, put educational criteria first and some didnt even include anything remotely related to education!  Also, how can you write website evaluation criteria for teachers and not even mention students?  I had to wonder if the authors of the criteria had actually used their criteria for sites to be used in the classroom.  The majority of website evaluation criteria in use today (particularly by universities) was written in the late 90s or early 2000s.  There have certainly been some changes in the way we use the internet since then.  I believe this area is well overdue for an update and it shouldn't be long before we see more appropriate criteria appearing in our professional journals.  Educational institutions, as well, have been too complacent accepting outdated criteria as guidelines for students and staff. 

What do you think?  I would love to hear what others think on this issue.

How Not To Steal People's Content on the Web

I came across this post on Hubspot Blog which details how to cite info found on the web, particularly info found in social media.  Take a look to give proper credit where credit is due.

Image Source: Kevin du Preez via http://www.australiacouncil.gov.au/resources/reports_and_publications/artforms/digital,_new_media_and_film/copyright

Website Evaluation Ideas on Pinterest

Well I've just been on Pinterest (yet again) and found some fantastic links to information on website evaluation.  If you havent tried Pinterest out yet then you really should.  I have found so many teaching and TL ideas that I just can't wait to try out in the classroom!  You can check out my Pinterest boards through my Personal Learning Network page.  The teaching and TL ones are towards the bottom.  Let me know what you think!  On my resources page I also have a link to information on how to use Pinterest in education.

Resource Page Updated

This short post is just to let anyone following this blog know that I have just updated my Resources page.  It is now in alphabetical order to hopefully make it easier to find stuff, and I have included a section on website evaluation (which I will add to as I work through this topic).  I have also done some general tidying up and organisation of categories.  Any feedback would be greatfully appreciated!

Website Evaluation - Educational Criteria

I have been a bit slack with my blog posts and uni forum posts for the first couple of topics for ETL 501- The Information Environment.  I have finally got my act together for Topic 3: Website Evaluation.  In the past, when I have looked for websites for a particular topic and class, I have always considered whether the site fit in with the topic, whether the students could understand it, and the reliability of it.  From my readings so far I am glad to see that I was on the right track.  Looking at different sets of criteria however, I can see that I needed to be more specific in my evaluation - to consider other factors relating to educational quality, reliability and the technical aspects of the sites.

The following is my evaluation of the Cyberguide Ratings For Website Evaluation as a tool for website evaluation.  This was one of the activities in our Topic 3 module.

In my opinion, the Cyberguide Ratings for Content Evaluation contains some educational criteria but is made up of mainly reliability criteria.  I would not rate this tool very highly as a guide to assessing the ed criteria of a site because the educational criteria is either incomplete or is not written in a way that highlights educational needs.

At the top of the page where info is requested I would add to "Audience" the teacher's name, the grade of the students and educational needs ie their reading level range.  Instead of "Purpose for exploring this site", I would put "Teacher's Purpose". 

Our readings mention that fit for purpose is the most important evaluation criteria in an educational setting so I would consider rearranging the subheadings in the table, effectively moving "Information Quality" to the top.  It would probably be worthwhile  changing this subheading to "Educational Quality", to ensure that teaching/learning is the main consideration. 

I would also rearrange the individual criteria,  putting first: "This site sufficiently meets the teacher's needs/purposes", with room to explain/indicate  how/why.  Then "This site sufficiently meets the students' learning needs", again with room to explain or indicate how, i.e. The information in this site is written using language the students could understand (a) independently, (b) with some assistance (c) with a lot of assistance.

Criteria should explicitly draw attention that the website is required for an educational purpose.  Criteria 4.H. This site provides interactivity that increases its value, for example, could be rewritten as "this site provides interactivity/ activities that extends the learning of students. 

Criteria also needs to be added so that the evaluator considers whether the site allows for differentiation. 

We also were asked to respond to another person's post on the forum.  I found particularly useful some points made by another student. She thought that criteria needed to be added that asked whether the content was relevant in terms of the curriculum framework.  Good point!  As a teacher I would want to know that a website I intended to use met specific educational outcomes for the topic I was teaching.  She also thought that TLs should consider whether the website had been scholastically reviewed.  This could give the evaluator a view of the website not previously considered, particularly if the reviewer had actually used the site in the classroom. 

Next post: Reliability and technical criteria for website evaluation.