Sites to be reviewedPart
Two Realities
I
A survey and review of of Internet
resources for educational use.
|
I have created a website
called Teach&Learn
that demonstrates my concept of a noncommercial portal for educational
professionals. |
Anyone who has spent a considerable amount of time on the Internet knows that finding useful content can be frustrating. Websites vary in quality and fall into categories that become familiar. Dot-com wannabes, abandoned good intentions, YourPortal's with plenty of available banner space and direct links to MyPortal's with old links to a few of the now nonexistent wannabes and well-intentioned.
Any human endeavor requires resources, and developing websites requires time, effort, and money, not to mention technical skills. On the Internet it is common to find failed ideas and abandoned causes. Both individuals and organizations soon discover the real costs of creating and maintaining websites, and their commitment often falters, or their strategy changes.
In The Battle of the Portals, Cathy de Moll, president of OnlineClass (a company providing educational content for a fee,) says
"...real online curriculum is hard to find on the Web right now at a portal or elsewhere..." and "The same people who assured me a year ago that their sites would always be free now act as if a subscription service is the nature of the universe." (OnlineClass monthly newsletter, 2000, found at http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/WCE/archives/demoll2.htm)
The central issue for integrating the Internet into the classroom is "educational content". Not portals, not even professional development. Quality content is the engine that will drive this home. Without content, the Internet will be empty. What follows is an examination of various types of sites found on the Internet.
Portals
Many websites hope to draw
an audience by serving as a portal by providing links to other websites
with "real" content. Portals do not provide nor incur the costs of
developing real content. However, even the owners of these sites discover it
is time consuming and costly to maintain a routine of searching and filtering
for relevant websites.
KinderArt - Claims to have "The Largest Collection of Free Art Lessons on the Internet." This is a typical portal attempting to draw an audience by its links to other sites. They provide no real educational content. Their business model is characteristic of portals and derives revenues from advertising banners, commissions as an "affiliate" (note the Amazon.com banners,) and merchandising in their "store." It is often difficult to determine who actually owns the online stores associated with portals. Likewise for who actually stocks and ships the merchandise. The online industry has a variety of "storefront" programs and packages offered by third party companies to portals whose sole function is to create traffic. Portals direct their visitors to these virtual stores which appear to be part of the portal, but in fact are not. How well this business model works is unknown. In any case, it does not fund educational content.
Mountain Lake Software sponsors CyberTeachers, CyberKids, CyberTeens and TeachersOutpost. CyberTeachers claims to be a "leading-edge teacher gateway to software, discussions, resources, and quality web content for student enrichment." In reality, there is little more there than links to CyberKids, CyberTeens and TeachersOutpost. TeachersOutpost is meant to be a community forum for teachers discussions on various issues. There does not appear to be much activity. Another wannabe website.
EDSITEment: The Best of Humanities on the Web Excellent example of a noncommercial portal funded by a coalition of nonprofit organizations. A partnership of the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Council of the Great City Schools, MCIWorldCom Foundation and the National Trust for the Humanities. It's stated purpose is "to offer a gateway for teachers, students, and parents searching for high-quality material on the Internet in the subject areas of literature and language arts, foreign languages, art and culture, and history and social studies."
The beloved Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators (both book and website) is mentioned often on the Internet and in papers and articles. The website is now part of the Discovery Channel's website, Discovery.com. Her online "guide" is a useful and a well designed website. However, it is heavy on the graphics (which means slow to load) and highly commercial with lots of banner ads, Discovery.com "folders" and Schrock's own promotional material (apparently she has got quite a little industry going,) all of which diminish its usefulness. This is an example of a site originally built on good intentions, but the owner undoubtedly hit the wall of limited resources and discovered the real costs of creating and maintaining a sophisticated website. Throw in a little entrepreneurial spirit and a sponsor with deep pockets, and problem solved.
Blue Web 'N is a portal from Pacific Bell and is part of their Knowledge Network Explorer suite of websites that also includes Filamentality and Wired Learning. Blue Web 'N is an excellent contribution from a commercial institution, a very useful portal based on a "searchable database of over 1000 outstanding Internet learning sites categorized by subject area, audience, and type (lessons, activities, projects, resources, references, & tools)." It is a clean site with limited graphics and no advertising beyond the company logos. Its limitation is that it "does not attempt to catalog all educational sites, but only the most useful sites." Once again, the real costs of supporting a sophisticated website constrain the efforts of the well-intentioned.
The problem with sites like AOL@School are obvious and much discussed. However useful the website is (one does have to go through a lot of pages to find links, thus one gets exposed to the AOL logo quite a bit), we have to ask ourselves do we want to help AOL burn their corporate brand into our children's brains.
Dot-com Wannabes
Dot-com Wannabes rushed to the Internet with vague business models hoping
be the first with the mostest providing something to whomever via the Web. Sometimes
part portal, Wannabes attempt to sell mercahndise, and/or
"Congratulations! You've just found one of the best teacher resources on the Internet!" So annnouces the LessonPlanPage. However it is highly commercial with lots of irritating banners. Many of the lesson plans appear to be older (1995-96) and none of it can be called online interactive educational content.
Sites to be reviewed
Eisenhower National Clearinghouse for Mathematics and Science Education