7B+Debbie

Assignment 7B Debbie Aron

I looked at three sites from the general studies section of the list that was provided. //Kidsgeo.com// seems geared to students in elementary grades up to fourth grade and had a map game ( I played the US one) that I scored pretty high on the clarity of goals,age appropriate content and skills and its applicability to assessment of the learner. Basically, it was a fun game that asked students to match the “state” pieces to the ones on the map and you received a score based on how fast you could do this. The benefit of the game is in repetition and drill, but it was challenging enough that a player could feel motivated to play until he or she actually knows where every state is on the map. ( Yes, I’m embarrassed to say I got a few wrong at first, and yes, I played it more than once…) No higher order skills required here, but for the singular purpose of acquainting kids with the locations of states on the map it accomplished the goal quite nicely. //A-Z Kids stuff.com// was a bit confusing. I couldn’t tell whether it was merely intended as a landing place for teachers to access several resources or if kids were to supposed to be the ones using it. It was very unexciting graphically and had very little to recommend it to kids, but some of the sites it housed were better. I looked at the Pirate adventure site, which lured kids in with a the promise of adventure, and then made them look at old documents with stories of various pirates and where they raided and what time period. One could certainly learn a lot of the experiences of victims and perpetrators here, and the student can explore as he or she wants by clicking on various sections of the site, but there is no animation or exciting graphics. It’s also a solitary learning experience, so no points on ability to play collaboratively. I can see how it could be used to fulfill a learning objective, but it wasn’t the most exciting site. //Touchstoneenergy.com// also confused me because the audience age was not clear. It opens with an engaging flash animation of a lightbulb talking about what fun it’s going to be to learn about energy saving measures and conservation that seems geared to a kindergarten or first grade audience. But then it has pretty complex instructions for the games that would be too difficult for most kids that young to read. Perhaps I’m wrong, but if it was geared to older elementary students ( 3rd or 4th grade) I would think they would find the talking lightbulb pretty infantile. The conservation game was pretty easy to figure out and fun, although the running tab on the screen that measured electricity utilized or wasted as one played the game and succeeded in replacing the old, wasteful lightbulbs with CML bulbs was not well explained if it was intended for the youngest audience.