Peer Review

American Indian History and Related Issues

Material Detail page

Reviewed:: Aug 25, 2002 by History

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Ratings

Overall Rating:

Content Quality:

Effectiveness:

Ease of Use:

Overview:: This website contains artwork, photographs, video and sound recordings, which
reflect the history and culture of Native Americans in North America as well as
Indian people in Central America and Mexico.
Type of Material:: Archival.
Recommended Uses:: The site should be used primarily as a research tool.
Technical Requirements:: None.
Identify Major Learning Goals:: None provided.
Target Student Population:: College level courses.
Prerequisite Knowledge or Skills:: A sense of curiosity and purpose. Students need background in Native American
history.

Content Quality

Rating:
Strengths:: This web site is a collection of links to other web sites. The web page provides
brief descriptions of the sites for which there are links. The linked sites
cover a broad range of issues with many providing historical information and
some offer primary sources for classroom use. The best of the five listed web
sites is "The Native American Experience" which contains photographs and images
from the Facts on File, Inc. The images portray aspects of Native American
experience from pre-contact to the present. Most have a brief description
connected to the image. The descriptions tend to focus on the activity or event
portrayed in the image. The "Theodore de Bry Copper Plate Engravings" portray
valuable aspects of Native American experiences.
Concerns:: Many of the categorization schemes are too broad and vague to be helpful. It
would be helpful to have sub-categories such as culture, law and politics, and
society. Site links appear randomly in some categories. The category "Indians
of North America" contains only sites prepared by the webpage author, a site of
his colleague, and four National Park Service sites on Alcatraz. Other sites
that might fit into this category are under related web servers heading. The
sites should be listed in alphabetical or chronological order. The author does
not clearly identify the sources of the copper plate engravings or the source of
the captions for other images offered on the site. There appears to be a heavy
reliance on National Park Service web sites.

Potential Effectiveness as a Teaching Tool

Rating:
Strengths:: The webpage was not designed as a teaching tool. Individual sites linked to the
webpage can be useful for classroom instruction. The teacher is left with the
task of searching the sites to determine what can be used in the appropriate
course.
Concerns:: None.

Ease of Use for Both Students and Faculty

Rating:
Strengths:: The webpage is easy to navigate. Pictures on the author's contributions appeared
fairly quickly.
Concerns:: It would be easier to navigate if the author included anchors on the webpage to
the category headings and at the end of the webpage to return to the top.
Download of the videos on the "Powwow" site was very slow. The webpage could
use some routine maintenance. A few sites randomly selected were dead or
suspended. Some links for Mexico and Central America were dead. One link for
Mexico and Central America was for a company producing videos and films.

Other Issues and Comments:: The author has provided a webpage giving voice to Native Americans by gathering
homepages for tribes and nations. Several of the sites offer important images
and documents. The author needs to devise a better categorization system, weed
out dead links, and provide more information about the sources for the images
and the captions supplied for them.
Creative Commons: