Sept. 9, 1999

C I 405

For my Internet search, I began at mamma.com, a search engine of search engines. I entered a keyword search of Math AND Education and came up with 64 hits. After trying some of the links and entering some site s, I realized that many of my initial hits were actually sites that listed other resource sites. By only performing one search, I was given about twenty other databases to search around in for more sites. In essence, my 64 hits accumulated about 200 actua l "sites" that could be looked at. It is from these hits that I have selected five sites to evaluate.

This site began very dynamically with lots of links and areas of interest to be followed. These links included things like a Site Map, Student Center, Teacher Center, Math Center, and Science Center. The Teacher Center included ar eas about lesson plans, discussion groups, and various other programs. It also contained an in-site keyword search. The Math Center contained links geared towards math, including a math standards link based on the state goals.

This site is very useful for both students and teachers to find information about math, science, or education related standards in the Chicago and Illinois areas. In a classroom, this site is best used as a background resource. There are multiple links and the navigation format is very user-friendly. The main page lists the search engines that their site is listed under and provides information on the creator, maintainer, and the funding of the site. It does not provide any information as to when this site was last updated.

Math Pen pals is a link off of a larger site called KidLink. KidLink is a website that organizes web-based projects around the world for students and teachers to take part in. MATH PEN PALS was a winner in the 1995 ISTE SIG/TEL o n-line project activity contest and is one example of a project that was created for KidLink. This website allows a class to create an online activity or project that other classrooms can join in worldwide. It allows a students local project to become mor e international and creates a tool for communicating with other classes around the world.

Many of the projects are from back in 1995, which concerned me, but they can still be used in classrooms. Also, all of the links are still active and a class can create a new activity for KidLink by contacting the coordinators listed. Once again th ere is no update, but the organization of activites and links is very clean and understandable. One drawback to this site is that the instructor must set up the activity with the coordinators, but after that, it becomes very student-run.

This page is a service of MathSoft, Inc. and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Technology Review. It contains puzzles that were previously printed in the journal and is a great place to begin an individual pro ject for each class member. With all the choices, students could pick a puzzle and find a solution for it and then present it to the class. Unfortunately, many of the answers are already posted and any student with access to this page could easily find th e listed answer.

This page provides contact information and disclaimer rights (since it is a commercial page), but the formatting is pretty simple. For an MIT supported site, the ease and convenience of navigation of this site is pretty unimpressive. There is very little in the way of features and some of the links requires specific software, but fails to inform you of that. This site can be utilized, but it would take a little creativity.