Create 1 - Appearance

This lesson was designed to encourage the user to find instructional websites and then critique the graphic design elements of the website.  The following is a list of instructional websites that I focused on:

1. SoftSchools.com  is a for math and writing worksheets leveled by grade and activity, and this site allows the teacher to design their own materials.  I found this site to be overwhelming with information.  While it is a valuable resource the information on the main page was too much for the consumer. 
2. Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to your own desktop to use as you wish.  The website was straight forward and easy to use.  The minimal graphic design keep it clean and easy to navigate. 
3. ​Filefolderfun  is a great instructional website that allows material to be gathered and distributed through a user friendly folder service.  The graphic design of the website will keep most from ever finding what is available for the user. The website is littered with adds that I find distracting. 
4. Funology is a website that focuses on crafts, games, recipes and science.  This is a well designed site that is easy to navigate.  This site is perfect for anyone looking to incorporate more STEM activities in their program. 
5. Innerbody is a great anatomy site that can be useful in a variety of subjects that deal with the human body.  This is a well designed site that is a great resource. 
6. ​National Library of Virtual Manipulative is a site designed for all ages to learn various math skills through fun games.  The real tragedy of this website is the poor design.  The games and information are great, but at first look one would be tempted to move on to another site. 
7. Literactive is a good website with resources to promote literacy. The design of the website is overwhelming when you open the page.  There is far too much information for a homepage. 
8. The Teacher's Guide is a well designed website with a variety of subjects, easy to implement lessons, and user friendly controls.  This website is appealing to the eye and a fantastic resource.  
9. Learn360 is the ultimate streaming multimedia resource for the K–12 educational market the complete district solution. Teachers, students, and parents can access more than 148,000 multimedia resources—including high-quality full-length videos, video clips, images, audio files, articles, activities, worksheets, interactives, and more on any Internet-enabled device, anytime, anywhere. Its enhanced, state-of-the-art platform, featuring the content, navigation, educator tools, speed, and performance that today’s online experience demands, makes Learn360 a powerful tool for flipped classrooms, blended instruction, project-based learning, and 1:1 environments.  This website has a great design and is easy to use. 
10. ​Oneswitch is a gaming website that focuses on games that teach.  The website does the same as many other sites, but this site is not as graphicly appealing. There is no white space and what colors are on the page are too bright. 

​​The list, I have provided above has described a number of instructional websites with some being  much better than others. 



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As you can see in this picture of The Teacher's Guide, this website has followed the guidelines of graphic design. 

This is an example of how OneSwitch.org is dark, not appealing, and has limited menu items to allow for easy navigation.