Reflection on Evaluating Websites

Before the assignment on evaluating websites I always knew that it was important to do research on them before they should be used in class, I just did not know how to go about that exactly.  I especially did not realize that there were so many websites with expertise on how to evaluate a website.  I assumed there would just be one correct way to go about it that everyone accepted.  The website that I evaluated was EasyBib.com.  It is a website that I have used for every paper assignment I have had since my senior year of high school.  I have always thought it to be a pretty refutable website, but I never thought of evaluating it to make sure.  Now I am glad that I have evaluated it because it confirmed that it is a very good website indeed.  I was worried that it might not be accepted in certain academic fields, but after evaluating it I see that it is a good reference point.  I learned a lot from evaluating websites, and it is something I will definitely use in my classroom.  For most of my career as a student I have just used any website I could find that had the information I needed and wanted.  Instead, I want my students to use websites that are respected in the learning community.  I doubt I will make my students evaluate every single website they want to use for class (that would be tedious) but it is something I would definitely make them do when they are working on a major project or are wanting to use a new website.

Website Evaluation Site

The site that I found for evaluation is run by Lesley University.  The website is run by Lesley University (click on it to check it out).

I found this site to be very useful for college aged students as well as teachers.  It gives a list of eight different things to look fro when evaluating a website, and then goes into specific detail about each of them and also includes examples.  Some of the options covered by this website seem to be more geared towards teachers because it asks questions such as if the website is appropriate for your classroom environment.  It also provides real websites for each of the eight different things to look for about a website so you can check it out on your own.  For example, one of the things to look for is currency, and it provides a link to CNN to see how current some of the articles are.  Overall, I believe this is an effective website evaluation site for teachers and older students.

Wikis

Honesty, before this class I had no idea how wikis worked.  I knew what they were, mainly because of Wikipedia.  We used wikis on blackboard for one of my classes last year, and even though I used it I was not sure how it worked.  I thought that wikis would be a lot more difficult than they are, which is why I was a little scared of them at first (okay not scared like terrified, but just gun shy to use them).  Now I can say that wikis really are quite simple and useful.

Posting on the wiki was actually really simple.  I did not have any problem when posting my information on it.  The first problem I ran into was trying to highlight words and make it so you can click on it and go to that link.  The first couple of times I tried I failed.  Every time I would try the entire link would show up instead of just being able to click on it.  For example. http//www.utk.edu would show up instead of just The University of Tennessee and being able to click on it.  I did not figure out how to do it until I came to class the next day.  Once I got it though it was really easy.  The other problem I had was with my picture.  I could not figure out how to do the wraparound text.  I tried about 13 different things on my own but just could not get it.  I ended up just putting the picture at the top.  It was not until I got to class that I saw that all you had to do was double click it and choose the edit picture option.  Once again, once I got it figured out it was easy.

Wikis could be very useful in an English classroom.  Students could use wikis to work on group projects or even group papers.  Another useful thing could be to have a wiki set up for students to work on their grammar.  There could be different links to click on that would take them to different grammar rules and have examples.

Learning Expectations for the Class

I kind of expect to learn a lot in this class.  My experience with technology so far in my life has been to use the easy stuff that I can understand, but to run away and hide from the harder stuff that might frustrate me.  I'm hoping that in this class I will learn to keep pushing when I do not understand something and try to figure it out.  Most of the time when I don't know what is going on with technology I just call my brother to help me out (he is a genius when it comes to technology) and if he can't help me I just wait until he can.  I know that we are just a couple of days into class, but so far I have really enjoyed it, which makes me cautiously optimistic for the rest of the semester.  I noticed in the syllabus that we will be doing some things that I have never tried before when it comes to technology, so we will see how that goes.  Also, as a future English teacher, I hope to learn ways to integrate technology into my classroom.  Technology was hardly ever used in my high school English classes, and basically never in college either, so I think it will be beneficial to learn ways to change that when I teach.  Just because a class is about literature does not mean that technology cannot be used in some way, in fact it could really help.  Hopefully I can learn to do some of that in this class.

Introduction to the class

My name is Nathaniel Scott (but I have always gone by Nat for some reason) and I am from Johnson City, Tennessee.  Before coming to school in Knoxville I lived in Johnson City all of my life where I attended Science Hill High School.  My license is going to be in Secondary English Education.  Teaching is something that I have always wanted to do, basically since I can remember.  I want to have an influence on young people, specifically at the High School age.  I just feel like high school is a time where young people start to find out who they are, and need positive influences in their lives.  I really got hooked on teaching though starting in High School when I worked at an after school mentoring program that allowed me to work with kids a lot.  I have also spent the last three years working at Austin East High School with the football team which has also spiked my interest in wanting to teach.  My area where I am getting my license is secondary English.  I do not know yet where I am interning, I am supposed to find out this semester sometime.  My main hobby is running, which I realize is kind of stupid sometimes.  I ran my first marathon last month in Memphis (I cramped at mile 16 and ran the last ten miles with a leg that kept cramping up).  I want to someday run the Boston Marathon.  Another main hobby of mine is coaching.  I haven’t decided yet if coaching is something I want to do when I teach, but I really love doing it.  Besides that I’m just a pretty normal college kid, I like going to sporting events and hanging out with friends, and going to Church and stuff like that.