Web+Evaluations+AL

=Web Evaluations=

Title: Web English Teacher Site URL: http://www.webenglishteacher.com/

Comments: This website, despite its fairly average scores, has a high potential of exposing students in an English or Creative Writing classroom to a large variety of writers and poets. If students know what they are after, the website is easy to manuver through. If the students are not able to find any writer that they are familiar with, the website gives an opportunity for them to find something new on their own accord. A way to incorporate this into a classroom is to have the students pick a random author and look him or her up on the website to find pieces of writing and possibly a biography of their writing experiences. This would be helpful in a way that gives the students an authentic exposure to a desire of exploring and reading with minimal effort. The only main drawback to the website is that it is heavily covered with advertisements and does seem questionable as there does not appear to be a strong authority behind the development of the website and its content.

This website seems to have a lot of potential if the teacher or student knows how to navigate it and exactly what they are looking for. The site has good, appropriate links to helpful topics like "More Ideas Than You'll Ever Use For Book Reports", which links to an article from Teach.net. It's a good starting place for teachers to look for possible assignments, but Web English Teacher doesn't usually contain these ideas, it more likely provides links to other sites that do. It also contains helpful lists of things like famous poets and young adult authors. I agree that a major drawback of this site is the advertisements, and I also think that website doesn't look very professional, which would turn me off from it as a teacher. All in all, Web English Teacher is a good place to start looking for reputable websites but not necessarily a good place from which to take your information. -BN

Title: Poets: From the Academy of American Poets Site URL: http://www.poets.org/

Comments: With entering the specific field of poetry, Poets.org is the first place that comes to mind. The website is incredibly easy to navigate through, with even a “poetry map” which can easily be utilized in a classroom. Students in a specific state and click where they live and the website delivers a list of featured poets that come from that area with giving a detailed biography when selecting a specific poet. With the large number of writers and poets that students can be exposed to, they are able to find a style of writing that suits their interests. Because of this, they are able to possibly mimic this style with various writing exercises (depending on how a teacher will incorporate this into a lesson plan). The website, with my exploration, does not have any limitations and comes from a dependable and trust worthy author. This is something that I would easily use in a classroom.

after looking through this site, i think i had an english teacher in high school who used this site, and she was a very good teacher. one thing i liked about it was that it has the poet database, where a student could search for a specific poet. i also liked the dropdown menu of the different types of poems for different occassions. it's nice that it also has a tab specifically for educators, that would obviously be helpful to teachers when navigating the site. i didn't really like that they had a "donate" tab, but i guess it's better than having a bunch of annoying pop-up ads. overall i think it's a good site for both educators and students. RP Link to Rubrics: