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SITE DESIGN
Factors Considered in the Design of the Busy Teachers' Web site K-12
Exploring the Internet for educationally relevant sites was exciting. However, the time involved to find one good site was quite extensive, factoring the time to find and screen for irrelevant, or low content, or inappropriate sites. The inefficiency of searches in this uncatalogued electronic library was frustrating. I was factored in.
Another kind of search inefficiency emerged with Web pages that promised links to "great educational sites," but which often led to more "great educational links" which led to more links.... After spending all this time hopping from one Web site to the next, the source materials were not always appropriate for student activities or for lesson planning.
It became clear that a well-designed site for educators should permit a quick review of good, rich source materials. Teachers should have enough information about a site in order to decide to follow a a link (or not). Without some description of the site, linking to irrelevant materials would be time wasted.
Another factor in design is that many teachers have little experience using the Internet. It is clear that teachers need to become familiar with and skilled at using this potentially powerful educational tool.
Putting all this together, I used part of my spring quarter (1995) at Georgia Tech to develop the start of a Web site that addresses these issues. I designed it with the view in mind that teachers were very busy people. They needed rapid access to quality source materials which were organized in a familiar way. They needed to know something about the contents of a site before they chose to go to it (or not). If they were new Internet users, they would be encouraged to explore further if they experienced a Web site that offered them some guidance, direction and quality 'payoff' for their efforts.
Carolyn Cole
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