Website Reflection

http://www.intel.com/education/index.htm?iid=ed_nav+home

Description of the Website

Intel’s Education Initiative is a tremendous website with vast amounts of information pertaining to helping educators capture the benefits of using technology in the classroom and create lessons that are applicable to our 21st century learners. Although this website has many useful and inspiring sections, I particularly chose it for this assignment because of the wonderful section that it has about “The Journey Inside” of the computer. Since this was one of the weakest areas in my Technology Applications Inventory, I found this section to be of outstanding value.

Positives

The home page of this huge site makes it very easy to navigate. On the left side of the page is a navigation pane that breaks the site into seven main sections. In addition, these sections are repeated in the center of the page with pictures and short, descriptive summaries of each of the main sections. The main page also has an attractive layout. Although it is bursting with information it is attractive and is not cluttered. Other features on the main page that lends to the professional look of the site are the links to movies and podcasts that further explain the initiative.


Negatives

I have used this site in the past and there are not many negatives that I can speak of on this site. However, since it is such a large site and the information is kept up-to-date, there are times, like today when I am writing this review, that some of the links that were working 24 hours ago are not working now. I assume these links have been taken down for maintenance purposes. This could be very problematic if one was planning on using this information in the classroom and suddenly the link was not working. However, keep in mind that this is the summer and maybe Intel takes that into account when taking a link down. Hopefully this would not happen during the normal operating hours of the school year.


The website’s value to 21st century, information-age education

This is the model site for 21st century, information-age education. The site is devoted to helping educators to use technology in the classroom to teach students how to apply higher-level, collaborative and innovative thinking skills to ready them for future productivity with technology. It is fun and engaging and uses today’s technology to reach students.

Your recommendation of the website to other educators


Without reservation, I would highly recommend this site to other educators. It has great value for the classrooms of today. The information is useful, appropriate and timely. Intel is a huge technological corporation that has a vested interest in our audience and the website caters to our profession with numerous helpful resources.