Techie Learning Tech

On Wednesday, we worked on a website evaluation as an assignment in my technology class. The purpose of this evaluation was to objectively and thoroughly critique a website for its educational value and usefulness in classroom instruction. The website I critiqued was http://www.mathfactcafe.com.

The site I chose was basically a math worksheet and flashcard generator for grades K-5. So it would be used by a teacher outside of class as a resource, rather than by students themselves. That altered the focus of my critique slightly, since the user-friendliness of a site isn't important to the same degree for a teacher as it is for young students. It was an interesting exercise though... We had to verify that the site worked in various browsers, check whether it required any plug-ins to run properly, etc.

I guess the part I found most difficult was verifying the credibility of the site. The site I chose in particular was published by "Math Fact Cafe, LLC." In other words, someone published the site under the name of a company of the same name. Given the content (worksheets involving simple math), the credibility wasn't of utmost importance. What really mattered was that the site did what it claimed, that is generating worksheets that are free of typos and formatting errors. There weren't any opinions or subjective material posted on the site that would make it as important to check the source's credibility.

Still, I think in the future when I'm looking at a site and trying to determine how useful it will be, this process we went through will help guide me.