Peer Review

This guide to doing research provides a visually attractive and simple process. The cartoon format and the topic of the first dog in space are likely to appeal to children. The home page summarizes the 6 steps visually, and each step also has a separate set of page that details that step, although research projects do not follow such a linear process. The content and images help to integrate concepts effectively. The materials are accurate, current, and "digestable" for elementary and middle school students. Kentucky school librarians developed the resource. The materials are self-contained and self-paced. Links work, and are labelled accurately. The website is ADA-compliant in that it provides a text-only version.

The site has information scrunched into one corner of the screen, making it somewhat hard to read and less attractive.  I checked it using both Chrome and Firefox. The display is somewhat better in Firefox, but still does not make effective use of the entire screen display.

Some of the exercises seem a bit irrelevant, or at least the relevance is not clear, such as in the "Group Similar Ideas Together" section, where part of the exercise has one mouse over pictures to see which are related.  "Dog" and "Dog House" are not related to one another in the same way that "Sled" and "Snow Board" are related.

The text-only version is not very engaging.

The learning objectives are very clear, and draw directly from ICT literacy standards. The tutorial asks users to identify what they know and need to know, and leads them gently yet efficiently through the research process, clearly building on prior concepts. The structure of the resource makes it easy for teachers to incorporate information into assignments; furthermore, a teacher's toolbox provides added support. Students learn lifelong skills as they master these concepts.

The site seems unlikely to be effective if used indivdually and without other teaching strategies.  While the basic steps are valid, there is not enough explanation if students do not initially understand the material.  Some examples are simplistic, such as the fake web pages used to provide examples of bogus information.  Poor quality web sites are rarely so obvious!

The materials in the Teacher's Tool Box may be fun for the students, but do little to add depth to the information presented.

This set of tutorials is very visually stimulating. Its "outer space" theme is well played out visually, and is developmentally appropriate. The materials are very engaging, and include interactive checks for understanding; in addition, learners can click on main terms to get their definitions. There are several ways to navigate the site intuitively. THe site includes a text-only version.

It is not readily apparent how to navigate through the tutorial.  There is one set of arrows to use to move from one section of the tutorial to the next, and another set of arrows to move through each step of a section. Sometimes clicking on a box in an illustration will provide additional information, but other boxes have no such links; visually, it is not obvious when additional nformation is linked and when it is not.  An experienced user will quickly figure out the various navigational options, but less experienced users may struggle.

There is no audio version of the text available, so the site does not appear to be ADA compliant.  

No help feature is provided.