When searching through MERLOT, I came upon this amazing website that links and explains countless sites by organizing them by purpose. I have already utilized some resources on this site for a project with my students.
Web 2.0 Cool Tools for Schools
This is perhaps one of the best technology sites I have found. This is exactly what it says it is: Cool Tools for Schools using Web 2.0. It is a very large database of internet sites for students and teachers to utilize in the classroom and school setting.
There is no doubt about the quality of content, it provides the links to various sites as well as an icon and description to guide the reader. These sites are then broken into categories as to how they would best be used in the classroom. Teachers may be searching for a way for students to do presentations, there is a tab in the navigator bar that then displays a table of sites for presentations. This site is not content specific, but rather can easily be applied to any topic and used for any grade and subject.
Considering the vast amount of material on the site, there is a time and topic for each site and any need may be met. Some could be teacher created to present information to the students, or they may be student created as a product or means through which they could share information with each other. Given it's open ended resource database, students and teachers may access the sites to apply them for various needs. There is no limit to the creativity that could occur using this site! It simply depends on the teacher and/or student's ability to navigate the individual programs, some are more difficult than others, but the brief description of each also can help the user to decide which site is best for their content purpose.
The website itself is very easy to use, however, as mentioned, the use of the linked sites will vary depending on which program is chosen. For example, if someone does not know how to upload photos or import something, a plethora of programs would be very challenging to them. CoolToolsforSchool itself is very easy to navigate. A teacher may go to the site with one particular purpose in mind, get the results, and leave. It is well organized with good visual guidance to keep the user going. The icons appeal to visual learners and many students are able to better remember an icon from a site, than the actual site name. It appeals to that visual learner. However, it can be a little overwhelming. If someone thought that there would only be one or two options for a presentation, they were wrong. The choices can be challenging, how do you know which is the best. The site does not rank the options, but only gives a blurb as to what can be done with that site. Also, I would have preferred that the links be set to open in a new window so that I could continuously go back to cooltools and try other ones to compare. One feature I did appreciate, is the A-Z index. If I heard of a program, but could not recall its purpose, I could go to the index to look it up. Otherwise, if I knew I would recognize the name of a program if I saw it, I can go to the index to find it and go to that resource. It just allows for another form of searching, in case the user gets lost.
Although the site can be overwhelming with all the resources, someone can use it very practically if they have one topic or purpose in mind. It can also be fun just to click around to learn about programs I did not know existed. I have found many alternatives that I would like to use. For example, I keep doing Prezi's for my students to introduce a story, but I would like to try other presentation tools. Also the organizer tools, I have used blubblus, but I would like to try many of the other ones to use technology on a daily basis.
Good evaluation. I hope this can be a good resource for you.
ReplyDelete~chuck