1. Efraín Suárez Arce EDFU 3017(003)
801-94-8906 Ada L. Verdejo-Carrión, Ph.D
Project #1: Surfing the WWWeb
Version 2.0 Revised and Expanded
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2. Contents
Identification
1. The Educator's Reference Desk
http://ericir.syr.edu/
2. The Alberta Assessment Consortium (AAC):
Everyday Assessment Tools for Teachers
http://www.aac.ab.ca
Comparative Analysis of Websites
1. Credibility
2. Content
3. Objectivity
4. User- Friendliness ("Interactividad")
5. Page Design
6. Restrictions/Warnings
7. Links
Conclusions/Comments
By Efrain Suarez
Annex 1
http://ericir.syr.edu
Annex
http://www.aac.ab.ca
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3. Identification
1. The Educator's Reference Desk http://ericir.syr.edu/
Created by The Information Institute of Syracuse (New York State), the people who
created AskERIC, the Gateway to Educational Materials, and the Virtual Reference Desk,
The Educator's Reference Desk provides high-quality resources and services to the
educational community. The Educator's Reference Desk brings you 2,000+ lesson plans,
3,000+ links to online education information, and 200+ question archive responses.
2. The Alberta Assessment Consortium (AAC):
Everyday Assessment Tools for Teachers http://www.aac.ab.ca
The Alberta Assessment Consortium (Canada)is a non-profit equal partnership of
educational organizations. It is dedicated to enhancing student learning through
classroom assessments that both increase student confidence and enable them to
effectively demonstrate what they know and can do.
According to their website, the main purposes of AAC are to:
1. Support teachers by providing opportunities for quality professional development;
2. Facilitate networking and sharing of knowledge, skills, and expertise; and
3. Establish liaisons with other agencies
4. Develop a broad range of assessment materials that are directly tied to the Alberta
curriculum, based on grade level standards, and that will enhance student learning;
Comparative Analysis of Websites
1. Credibility
The Educator's Reference Desk
The website includes The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) and the Education
Resources Information Center (ERIC) plus the fact that the site depends on resource
guides and lesson plans written and submitted by American teachers and those from other
countries. This gives the website a lot of subjectivity, reliability and credibility.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
This site limits itself only to entries made by AAC members in Canada. This limits the
scope of information as compares with the ERD website.
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4. 2. Content
The Educator's Reference Desk
I. Resource Guides
Counseling, Family Life, Educational Levels, General Education, Educational
Management, Librarianship, Educational Technology, Reference Evaluation, Specific
Populations, Subjects, Teaching
II. The Lesson Plan Collection
The Lesson Plan Collection contains more than 2000 lesson plans written and submitted
by teachers from all over the United States and the world. These lesson plans are also
included in GEM, which links to over 40,000 online education resources.
III. The Question Archive
The Question Archive is a collection of responses to questions that were sent to the
AskERIC service.
IV. Search GEM and/or ERIC
a) The Gateway to Educational Materials (GEM) provides a quick and easy access to
educational resources found on various federal, state, university, non-profit and
commercial Internet sites.
b) The Education Resources Information Center (ERIC) database
(http://www.eric.ed.gov/) is operated by the United States Department of Education and
contains more than one million bibliographic records of educational literature going back
to 1966 plus more than 100,000 non-journal documents (issued 1993-2004), which are
available in full-text versions at no cost to the user.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
The AAC website has a reasonable amount of Assessment Materials and Professional
Publications. Links to these materials and other resources are located on the left side of
the page. Many of the materials and resources are for members only and are accessible by
username and password. Assessment materials are available in many K-12 subject areas
in English and French. A smaller collection is available for public access as well as a Q &
A section. These entries are limited to members of the AAC.
3. Objectivity
The Educator's Reference Desk
This website includes the GEM and the ERIC databases and includes resourse guides and
lesson plans written and submitted by teachers from various countries. Though not
"objective" in a literal sense the ERD website provides many subjective entries which
allow a diligent student to access various points of view and arrive at his own
conclusions.
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5. The Alberta Assessment Consortium
This site limits itself only to entries made by AAC members, so the student only has
access to the AAC stance on different matters.
4. User- Friendliness ("Interactividad")
The Educator's Reference Desk
I found the ERD website to be faster and easier to surf around in, in spite of its much
larger database. It’s obviously been designed as a gigantic accessible database.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
I found this website to have the look and feel of a overtaxed personal website.
5. Page Design
The Educator's Reference Desk
Clearly the ERD website design is brighter, easier on the eyes (color wise), clearer, which
facilitates its use for those of us unfamiliar which such databases.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
The AAC website is simple and quaint, like something I myself would make at home
with my clunker PC and a page making wizard.
6. Restrictions/Warnings
The Educator's Reference Desk
I found none except a list of criteria used to accept web postings.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
The postings and links are limited only to entries made by AAC members in Canada. As
mentioned before, this limits the scope of information as compares with the ERD website
7. Links
The Educator's Reference Desk
Has 1151 links under "assessment" according to its search engine.
The Alberta Assessment Consortium
Does not have a search engine per se. Rather you must go from one page to another in
order to find something specific or go to http://www.aac.ab.ca/assesslinks.html
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6. Conclusions/Comments
For all the aforementioned reasons, The Educator's Reference Desk is clearly
the superior page. I would use the AAC page for supplementary material or as a
last resort.
Annex #1
http://ericir.syr.edu/
Annex #2
http://www.aac.ab.ca
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