WIT 2003

Types of Educational Sites	Evaluating Sites	Exploring Sites	Using Educational Sites
Evaluation Checklist	Additional Reading	Teaching Guide	Home

Guiding Questions for Using Educational Sites

As you have researched, there are an incredible amount of sites that you may choose to use with your students in the future. The possibilities for engaging and enriching learning expands with the support of such resources. As good as these sites are, they have to connect and relate to what you are doing in the classroom. They must contribute greatly to your planned experiences. Choose wisely. Don't let the glitz of a site undermine or overburden the true goal of learning.

Here are some questions to keep in mind as you evaluate sites. Some of these questions are based on Understanding by Design and NCREL's Lesson Planner.

• What do you want students to know and be able to do? What key content and concepts do you want students to learn? What is the big idea behind this learning?
• What big questions will generate discussion? What questions will help students focus on provocative aspects of the topic and guide further inquiry?
• What engaged and worthwhile activities will your students complete? How will you know your students have learned? How will students be involved in the assessment process?
• What student needs, interests, and prior learning are foundations for this work? How will students develop their ideas with the help of their classmates, teacher and other resources?
• What instructional practices will you use? How will your learning environment support these activities? What other support services do you need?

Please keep all of this in mind when evaluating existing educational sites for your students.

For our final activity, work individually on a topic of interest to your students. Chose an appropriate educational purpose, select a site or sites to support this goal and tell us about it. You may choose how to make this presentation.

Prev. | Home

Evaluating Existing Educational Sites was created by E. Fabiyi (efabiyi@cuip.net) & L. Gool (lgool@yahoo.com) for the Web Institute for Teachers,
last updated June 6, 2003