Spring 2000

Exemplary Educational Web Sites

Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2000 12:01:26 -0600 (CST)
From: "Jason J. La Fleur" <jlafleur@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: Educational Tutorial

Jim - here is the best tutorial I found online.

It is a tutorial on the stock market called EduStock.  

http://library.thinkquest.org/3088/index.html

It helps people learn how the principles of the market operate and how
they work.  The major outstanding characteristic of the site that makes it
exemplary in my mind is the ability to invest through simulation.  

you can take $100,000 of imaginiary money and invest it in the companies
of your choice.  The website offers stock-tracking in near-real time (a 15
to 20 minute delay) to allow you to see how your portfolio is performing
throughout the day.  This is a great feature to allow students to actively
learn through experiencing the environment themselves.  

In addition to the simulation, there is also a text + photo progression
that gives interested students a foundation in the history and terminology
of the profession.  

I actually found this site interesting enough to start participating in
the simulation.  I have been thinking of investing some money in the
market for awhile, and this would be an ideal forum to become familiar
with it.  

- Jason La Fleur



Date: Fri, 21 Jan 2000 09:08:11 -0600 (CST)
From: fein adam daniel <fein@students.uiuc.edu>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: educational tutorial

Dr.Levin
As you can see I finally got my telnet account squared away.
After some searching, the Educational Tutorial site I found is the EDRC or
Educational Development Resource Centre.  It is located at
http://hednet.polyu.edu.hk/
Not only does this site offer all types of Resource programs for
educational development, but it has chat rooms and a guest book available
as well.
Try clicking on Teaching Development alone for a list of about 50
programs. Something else that caught my eye was an on-line Meyers-Briggs
Assessment, yet another helpful resource.
Compared to the global schoolhouse, this site is more for the teacher and
less for the young student, but still offers links to resources for
student learning as well as teaching and staff development etc...The
layout of the Schoolhouse page is more interesting than the EDRC site.  
It seems only the global schoolhouse page offers a search.
Overall though, both sites seem exemplary in their own fashion.

-adam fein



Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 12:41:52 -0600 (CST)
From: Bret <hitching@students.uiuc.edu>
To: Jim Levin <j-levin@uiuc.edu>
Subject: EDPSY 387 Tutorial evaluation assignment

Hi Dr. Levin,

Because I'm pretty interested in the web page construction which we will
soon be doing in your class, the tutorials narrowed my search of
"Educational tutorials" to include the terms html +  authoring. I like to
use the infoseek.go.com search engine becasue you can run a large search,
and then "search within these results" which is exactly what I did.

I found several sites that were all very useful.  The three I liked most
were: http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/teachingtool/

http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/


http://www.microsoft.com/insider/internet/default.htm


I liked this one best :  http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/tut/

because it's intor said that it was created to "to help teachers create
learning resources that access information on the Internet."  It followed
a standard format intorducing me to the basic of html, and had links to
specific functions and actions. Tihs was really helpful becuase I can go
back to it later when I am wondering how to find a specific function, and
I'll find what I'm looking for very easily without having to go through
the other parts again.

Another excellent componant was that it organized the infomration into a
series of lessons which served as good benchmarks for a learner to go at
his/her own pace.  Each lesson had specific activities concluding it which
also help in the learning process.

I'm sure that I will utilize this page (as well as the others I found)
when working on webpages in the future.

Bret



From: Junghyun An <jan2@uiuc.edu>
To: "'j-levin@uiuc.edu'" <j-levin@uiuc.edu>
Subject: Comparision of educational tutorials
Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2000 22:30:36 -0600

  Dear Dr. Levin:

  Here is the URL for an educational tutorial that I found to compare with Global School Net, BioChemNet: 
  http://schmidel.com/bionet.cfm

   Specific tutorials, Biology Class ( http://pc65.frontier.osrhe.edu/hs/science/hbio.htm ) or World Chemistry ( http://www.intschool-leipzig.com/bailey/home/ ) in High School Hub ( http://schmidel.com/hub/chem.htm ), are showing diverse learning or teaching materials with descriptive notes, labs, dictionaries, manipulative simulations, quizes, and so on.

  In comparion, BioChemNet includes more diverse Web sites linked to itself like Hub rather than one consistent tutorial program.  But, both of the programs have Web-based, free educational resources and tutorials although their covering areas are different.  While Global School Net contains cooperative projects, especially on reading, writing, geographics, and enviromental science, BioChemNet serves with lab guidelines, inquiries, quizes, and lecture notes on biology and chemistry.  Another difference between them is grade leve at which they target: Global School Net is for a wide range of graders, whereas BioChemNet is mostly for higher graders such as middle, high schoolers or graduate students.  That might be one reason why the basic styles of the two tutorials or the Web page designs in them are dissimilar.  In addition, Global School Net focuses more on cooperative learning and project based activities than BioChemNet does.  Instead, BioChemNet gives more general resources on science and education: for example, science news, teachers' communication space, and even career information.  However, both of them are good tutorials for children or learners to develope their creativity, critical thinking, their inquiries, reading, writing, and technology skills through the Internet.  Both tutorials also provide teachers or self-learners with rich teaching or learning guidelines, such as timelines, objectives, references and technology resources.  By involving in those tutorials, children can do many kinds of hands-on activities and they will proceed a lot of thinking, reading and writing work in integration with technology.  

Junghyun An.



From: "Constanza Bacca" <constanzabacca@hotmail.com>
To: j-levin@uiuc.edu
Subject: Educational Website
Date: Wed, 26 Jan 2000 17:08:58 CST

I have found these URL I think are pretty good
http://familyeducation.com/home/
http://teachervision.com/

They have the information well and clearly organized. They're updated and 
they allow users to interact.
Sincerely,
Constanza Bacca



Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2000 00:36:07 -0600 (CST)
From: hyun eun choi <hyunchoi@students.uiuc.edu>
To: Jim <j-levin@uiuc.edu>
Subject: Re: EdPsy 387


Dear professor Levin,

Here is the educational tutorial website that I have found.

http://7-12educators.about.com/education/7-12educators/library/weekly/aa080897.htm

This website is about " Planning Internet Projects: Guidance for
Beginners". It is supposed to cover what other projects exist and how to
start and plan online project. However, all the links do not work.

I don't even think it is not effectively designed. 

First of all, this website was not as eye-catching as "Harnessing the
Web". It does not attract attention. The design and color of website was
not very impressive. 

Second of all, layout of content table is not very effective. When 
the page is opened, the content table should be observable at once 
without having to scrolling down the page too much. Since the
pages is about "Planning Internet Projects: Guidance for Beginners", "How
the Internet is used in Education" section should be the first one to be
presented. 

Thank you

Hannah