Technology Review and Integration Plan Essay Example for Free

Technology Review and Integration Plan Essay In the 80’s children normally depended on flash card, heavy encyclopedia, libraries and their parents to learn. When the age of personal computers (PC) started to gain momentum in the 90’s, children started to experience computer programs that help them learn. In the late 90’s multimedia application distributed in Compact Disc (CD) can be installed into computer to provide an interactive learning for children. Just recently with the dramatic growth of the internet, nearly all children have access to an internet connected PC. This also boosts the demand for educational websites that provide learning tools either for a fee or completely free. There are probably millions of websites that can be classified as educational but only few studies that directs us which website are best for our teachers, parents and students. This paper examines educational websites for children by going through at least five educational websites. Then from these five, detailed comparison is done on three best educational website found. Technology Review and Integration Plan The internet which connects computers and servers around the world is now the leading source of information. Vast amount of data can be gathered from internet. One of the very useful websites for teachers, parents and students are educational websites. They come either for free or for a certain fee. Free educational websites normally earn through advertisement. Five of the most notable children’s educational website are http://funschool. kaboose. com/, http://www. kidsknowit. com/, http://www. teach-nology. com/, http://www. kbears. com/, and http://nobelprize. org/. The best characteristic of the Knowledge Bears website is the futuristic submarine like graphical interface. This feature makes the site very attractive and easy to use. Although on the other side, since it is full of flash interactive animation, it loads relatively slower than a more text oriented website like the KidsKnowIt. com website. One of the most interesting features of the Funschool Kaboose Website is the kid oriented look of the graphical user interface like the one shown in Figure 2. This makes it easy for kids to understand the usage of the site. The negative side of this site is that it is more of games than information. Each link are consists of educational games. This makes it less informative than the two other educational websites. The KidsKnowit website contains a simple interface that allows it to be loaded quickly in any internet browser. It has more topics and more information than the Knowledge Bears and Funschool Kaboose website. Although it has some disadvantages compared to other sites, but overall, from cost, ease of use, availability, reliability and learning outcome this site proves to be better. Even with the distracting Google ads, the KidsKnowIt website still gives the best experience. It would be easy to integrate these educational websites into the classroom. First, time must be allotted in every subject to learn from these sites. Then initially, an overview should be given to all the children how to navigate through these website’s educational tools. Then some rules must be set as to how long, what areas and what objectives must be met every time the students visit this site. Finally, an evaluation procedure such as how fast they accomplish the games or an exam about the subject matter must be provided to check the progress of learning.With all of these put in place, then there is no doubt that these sites will be very helpful in teaching students. References About us: Kidsknowit Network Outreach Program. Retrieved August 15, 2008, from Kidsknowit Web site: http://www. kidsknowit. com/about. php About us: Kbears. com . Retrieved August 16, 2008, from Knowledge Bears Website http://www. kbears. com/about. html Main Page: Kidsknowit. com. THE TOTALLY FREE CHILDREN’S LEARNING NETWORK. Retrieved August 16, 2008, from KidsKnowIt Website http://www. kidsknowit. com/