Fall 1999

Exemplary Educational Web Sites

Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 13:14:19 -0500 (CDT)
From: ozlem yesim ozbek <ozbek@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: web page and exp

Hi,
Here is the web page http://www.mcn.org/ed/autodesk/

I think it is a  exemplary projects because project based on learning and
projects used as a comlementary to classs.
thanks!
ozlem                                                                



Date: Sat, 28 Aug 1999 19:17:50 -0500 (CDT)
From: jared vernon berrett	 <berrett@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: Exemplary Educational Website

Dr Levin,
While browsing www.gsn.org I spent time reviewing some of the
projects.  On one of these projects I began browsing the sponsors.  I
ended up at a phenomenal site from National Geographic.  It is a Geography
Education website which won "a best new education online product" for
1999. The whole site is good but the xpedition hall is really cool.  

Try it out: http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/main.html

Jared



From: JDBash2@aol.com
Date: Thu, 26 Aug 1999 16:41:06 EDT
Subject: My name, goals, and url.
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu

Jim-

My pick for a website is on assistive technology.   It does lack in some 
areas but provides a great deal of information.  

http://www.infinitec.org/

Also, last year my students had fun at this site:

http://www.lerc.nasa.gov/Other_Groups/K-12/K-12_homepage.html


Jamie Basham



From: "Young-Jin Lee" <ylee12@uiuc.edu>
To: <j-levin@uiuc.edu>
Subject: First EdPsy 387 assignment
Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 10:10:38 -0500

Dear Prof. Levin:

I found the project, <http://www.kie.berkeley.edu/KIE.html>The
Internet as Knowledge Integration Partner: <http://www.kie.berkeley.edu/KIE.html>Improving
Science Learning (KIE) , conducted at the University of California at
Berkeley. I tried to look over the web page by two points, an user
interface and their approach. And my opinion is as follows:

1.	User Interface

It has quite simple user interface. Almost every activities can be done
on the web browser which has three main parts, a main panel for
student's activity, information panel, and some project milestone button
panel.

The information panel shows information on where students are in the
whole project and project milstone button panel has some useful buttons,
such as project guides, evidence, and overviews. When students have some
problem, they can pop up the information panel by just clicking one of
them. But students need additional workbook. I don't think additional
book is necessary. Workbook can be merged into the project web page and
students can do every activities, not almost, in their web browsers.

It has database search capability. But it didn't work in this web
version. I think the original version in Macintosh may have this
functaionality. It may be still under construction.

2.	Contents

In this test project students start from two opposing scientific
theories and they need to find out which one is correct. To complish
this goal they looks over some scientific evidence, which is very common
in daily life, and develops them to the theory.

After considering the given evidences, they need to make their own
evidence and prove their theory with their evidence. While one student
or group explain their ideas, the other students ask them what they feel
unreseanable.

With this process, all students moves into the right concepts.

I think this procedure can make student help apply scientific theory to
their normal life and feel science is not that difficult subject. In
that point, this project will be useful for developing students'
scientific thinking ability.



Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 21:40:22 -0400
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
From: Edgardo Aviles <avilesga@uiuc.edu>
Subject: Educational URL

Dr Levin,

The educational web-site that I selected to present can be reach at:

http://forum.swarthmore.edu/

This web-site, The Math Forum Home Page, constitutes a great tool for the
mathematics education community of learners. It offers very good resources
for teachers, such as: lessons plans, and also for students with
interesting sections, like "Ask Dr Math". In addition, this web-site serves
to enrich the teaching and learning process of mathematics at all levels,
from early grades to college.



Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 08:37:37 -0500 (CDT)
From: guiboke seong <seong@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: an exemplary web site


Dear professor Levin,

I like this site:
http://www.m-w.com/home.htm

It is Merriam-Webster On-line dictionary. As a major function, it offers
you a full range of explanations and thesaurus of a word you type in.
Also, in the definitions of a word, important/difficult words are
hyperlinked to their original definitions. It has other cool subfunctions,
such as kid's dictionary with 'build your own dictionary' section, etc.
It also has 'word of the day' and 'word games.' 

I think it is exemplary because it is a dictionary that every second
language learner would need who wants to look for/learn words effectively
and fast. Also the site seems to be well-designed.

Thank you!
Guiboke



Date: Wed, 1 Sep 1999 21:57:35 -0500 (CDT)
From: francis scott walters <fwalters@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: EDYPSY 387: Exemplary Educational Website Report

TITLE:  "Exploring the Environment," linked to NASA's Center for  
Educational Technologies "Classroom of the Future" website.  

"Exploring the Environment" URL: <http://www.cotf.edu/ete>

GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
>From the title page, the site is divided broadly into three sections Q
"Start Here," which gives an oveview of the site and its purposes,
"Modules and Activies" for students, and "Teacher Pages" for instructors.
The purpose of the site is to aid high-school students and teachers
engaged in earth science projects.  Teams of students analyze satellite
pictures and attempt to arrive at solutions to "open-ended earth science
problems" such as global warming, land use, population growth, and water
pollution. The problems that students are asked to address are thus
interdisciplinary in nature, and the leartning that goes on, under teacher
facilitation, is "problem-based learning" (PBL).
(Cf <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/introduction.html>.)


WHY THE SITE IS EXEMPLARY, OR NEARLY SO:
The site promotes the productive, more engaging idea of "from surfing to
serving" (as opposed to merely passive, one-way surfing) by (1)
facilitating student collaboration in "remotely located classrooms," (2)
by enaging "high school students in collaborative scientific inquiry and
analysis," and (3) by providing some guidance as to how to use web-based
resources to fulfill educational/research goals, as, for example, at
<http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/teamprodassess.html>

One can isolate sections of this multi-modular website that function more
or less according to the systematic "Define / Design / Deliver" model of
web-based project development described at:
<http://www.gsn.org/web/webproj/index.htm>.  For example:

DEFINE:
Problem-solving guidelines at < http://www.cotf.edu/ete/pbl.html> and
references at, for example, <
http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/korea/kreferences.html>
may be seen as
part of a "Define" phase of collaborative web-based learning.

"Modules and Activities" menued at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/modules/modules.html> are graded according
to difficulty as to concepts
and web technology-handling skills:  "Activities," "Basic," 
"comprehensive," and "Advanced."  Students' working through may also be
seen as part of a "Design" phase of a project since in the low-level
"Activities" modules students are helped to learn how to use
the technologies needed to create webpages, e.g., downloading, saving,
and altering ("clean up and stretch") photographic images.

Problem Based Learning objectives given at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/tprob/teacherout.html>
provide guidelines for defining the scope
of the project, e.g., "determining whether a problem exists," "creating an
exact statement of the problem," and, loosely, for designing and
delivering some product of collaborative research and analysis, e.g., "
presenting the solution, orally and/or in writing."  (It does not
explicitly refer here to web-based publishing, however.)

"Planning" and "Facilitating" teacher guidelines linked to <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/planfac.html> 
may be used in a Define phase of a project.  


DESIGN / DELIVER:
"Assessing" guidelines similarly linked, e.g., "Ideas for Individual
Projects" and "Ideas for Team Projects," may be used in Design and Deliver
phases.  (A suggestion for a web page is found at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/teamprodassess.html>. )

A page at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/othersites.html> gives links to
several websites relevant to remote-sensing class projects.  


DELIVER:  
A site at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/ideacont/remsensrep/remsensrep.html>
gives explicit suggestions on and models of HTML
webpage reports.

Free Landsat images linked to the site at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/othersites.html> may
conceivably be used on a student group
webpage project.

Tips on managing Netscape e.g., how to employ video clips and sound
files), ftp, and image-processing software are given at
<
>.  These may be employed
in a Design and Delivery phase of a project.

The seven-step iterative model (especially steps two through five) of
problem-solving mentioned above ( http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/tprob/teacherout.html )
gives guidance 
on ongoing project evaluation, which is a component of a Delivery phase of
project development.

The guide on concept mapping at <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/pbl2.html> can
be
used in the Define phase to help students organize their thoughts/data
they have been analyzing, and also in a Design phase to create web-based
images of said ideas for class presentations.


An evaluation form at
<http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/ideacont/volcinfgath.html>
provides
implicitly encourages students to use (and document) online sources for
projects.  (The form, created by one teacher user, is weighted more hevily
toward use of traditional hardcopy sources, however, which may be a
weakness of the site -- see immediately below.)

 
WEAKNESS OF THE SITE?
>From a product-oriented point of view, the "Exploring the Environment"
site might be said to suffer from not providing enough explicit guidance
on or models to students on how to construct one's own web-based report or
presentation.  It seems to presume some web-literacy on the part of the
(high-school-age) students.  

On the other hand, from a process-oriented point of view, the site might
be said to be exemplary, or at least very useful, in that it does provide
students and teachers with web-based resources for the analysis and
hands-on modification of remote-sensing images, and learning of the
various scientific concepts related to the modules.  In addition to
helping students come to grips with the software, the ETE site, in its
own words, also provides resources allowing students to "collect, analyze,
generate, and transmit information using computers. They use email to
communicate their findings to ETE students at other schools and to contact
scientists for answers to questions. They use computers to search the
Internet at large for information leading to a satisfactory solution to
the problem they are trying to solve. Finally, they use word-processing
software or hypertext mark-up language (html) to create a report on how
they approached a problem."  (Cited from <http://www.cotf.edu/ete/teacher/introduction.html>.)  
Thus, insofar as it engages the student in actively
searching for, analyzing, and sharing data through the Web, ETE may be
said to be useful/exemplary.



Date: Wed, 01 Sep 1999 22:18:54 -0700
From: Rui Wang <r-wang1@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: homework

Hi, professor,

The homepage of LAS of UI, as many others, which i found effective and
exemplary, has address: http://kingbird.las.uiuc.edu/las/
Here are some thoughts:
I feel that the home page of LAS of UI is good and exemplary website,
because it has several common features shared by good webpages.  First,
it is very visual, for example, the title of "University of Illinois at
Champaign-Urbana" on the top, the name " College of Liberal Arts and
Science" in bold and large letters, and the picture of Henry
administration building on the middle left with "LAS" below the picture,
taken together, visually shows that what homepage this is.  Second, it
is of its simplicity and clarity. College information, program
information, external information, calendars, and search are all
categorically aligned up in the center of the page. Third, informative.
Each category leads to a whole set of information, which, combined
together, cover almost everything a viewer wants to get. And finally,
once again, the whole page is simple, clear, and comfortable to view.
thanx.
rui



From: j-paik@students.uiuc.edu
Date: Thu, 2 Sep 1999 08:36:08 -0500 (CDT)
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: 1st assignment

Dear Professor Levin:

URL:http://www.eslcafe.com

-- It is for international English teachers and students. They provide
grammar text and useful phrases in English. Also, they have chat room,
cookbook and many other info. 

In addition, they provide email based 'email teacher' section which give
people to send email if they have Qs in English.