Website Review #2

Website Review #2

Enchanted Learning (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/Home.html) is a child friendly website with resources for just about any topic. Teachers will love the amount of printable materials that are available on this site. From diagrams, charts, and maps, to worksheets and activities, Enchanted Learning claims to have over 20,000 web pages worth of material.
The look of this site leaves a lot to be desired. The home page is divided into many different categories that are represented in several different ways including images with links. They also have an alphabetical list of additional topics on the right side of the page and even more categories at the bottom of the page. I found the easiest way to navigate the page was to use the search box at the top of the page which brings back a list of results from their website.

While much of the material on Enchanted Learning is free, there is a subscription fee of $20.00. With this, teachers get access many printable classroom resources. They entice teachers by showing thumbnails of the work sheets but you must be a member to access the full size version. All of the student resources, from what I have seen, are free.

I have used this website many times with my Elementary School classes. I find that it is great for them to use for research. The language is geared towards children. The text is straight to the point so the students do not have to read through pages and pages of material to find the important fact. They have an easy time finding what they are looking for and they are able to find images and diagrams for most topics. There are links to other related materials as well. My students were using this website to study ecosystems. They were able to learn about rainforests from this site. They were also able to navigate from the rainforest page to a page about a specific animal that lived there by clicking on highlighted text under the Animals of the Rainforests section. For me, as a technology teacher, this is very important because I do not want my students spending an entire period searching for information when they can get it easily from one place. I also find that, for many of the topics that the students are studying, when they do a Google search, Enchanted Learning is one of the top websites that return.

If I were given the task of revamping the website, I would start with the design of the homepage. I haven’t quite figured out what warrants a link to have a picture, what links are on the side, and what links are on the bottom of the page. They need to consolidate the links in one place. I think there should be a drop down menu with all the topics along with a search box. I think the homepage is unnecessarily long. There should be a separate section for student resources and teacher resources. I would like to see all the material made available to teachers for free but I guess it costs money to maintain the site.