Peer Review

Television History - The First 75 Years

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Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This entire website is devoted to the history of the design, development, and marketing of the television set. It is arranged in a chronological order, year-by-year, to show how tv developments progressed, from the 1900s to the year 2000.
Type of Material:: Reference Material.
Recommended Uses:: - The best us of this material would be as self-paced, out-of-class course readings. - Could be used for historical research
Technical Requirements:: No special technical requirements are needed to view the module.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: - To provide a history of the development of TV about a) the history of TV-set design, b) tv development, and c) tv marketing.
Target Student Population:: - The target student population would be any student who needs a historical understanding of television developments and advertising. - One population might be students of tv/radio/film, advertising and marketing. - Another distinct population might be students of mechanical engineering or of other technical realms where it is important to understand television parts.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: Some basic history would be helpful to understand as readers explore each of the main time periods.

Rating:
Strengths:: - The site is quite comprehensive, and organized very well - For young students who have no concept about what older tvs looked like, and what tv advertising entailed, this site can help increase such knowledge. - Most of the content is organized by time in order to give an historical perspective. To better understand the time, users can click a link to a specific year to get a sense of much things cost such as cars, gas, houses, bread, milk, postage stamps, stock market, average annual salary, and the minimum wage. - The page entitled Links includes an internal portal leading to other potentially interesting content related to TV history such as inventors, VCRs, manufacturers, antique radios, and others.
Concerns:: - The content is interactive. - Material is very detailed and comprehensive. - Some students may find it too detailed to engage with the content. - One page of the website is entitled What's New. Unfortunately there are only a few links are on this page and they only go up to the year 2006.

Rating:
Strengths:: - Due to the plethora of reading material, there is no shortage of content available on this site. - The FAQ page provides some interesting material for a trivia or Jeopardy style game about TVs. http://www.tvhistory.tv/faq.htm There is also some interesting material on http://www.tvhistory.tv/TV-trivia.htm within the site.
Concerns:: - No specific learning objectives are presented - There is no interactive content to engage students - Instructors will need to review the site in detail, and develop their own learning objectives and assignment materials. - Instructors may need to identify which aspects of the site should be read.

Rating:
Strengths:: - The site is well-organized and easy to navigate. - For each of the major time periods, user can navigate deeper into specific areas about each time according to the following categories: advertising, books, early inventors, magazines, patents, and timeline. - For users seeking something specific, there is an extensive alphabetical index available at: http://www.tvhistory.tv/alpha.htm
Concerns:: - The what's new section is over 10 years old, so it's not really new. - The FAQ, Links, and Collections pages don't really provide much explanation. - The site would benefit from an internal search tool to help users find information within the site.