Evaluating websites 2
Searching The Web - Lesson 4
Objectives
- To stay safe when going online and to know what to do if they have a problem
- Make and explain judgements about the design of digital content
Lesson Resources
- Lesson Slides
- Website evaluation sheets
- Kids easy links presentation (to share with students to give them easy access to all the links they need in this lesson)
Lesson 1 - Refined Searching
Lesson 2 - Other ways of searching
Lesson 3 - Evaluating websites 1
Lesson 4 - Evaluating websites 2
Lesson 5 - Searching Maps
Lesson 6 - Artificial Intelligence and searching
Introduction
Recap the previous lesson with the following questions:
- what was important to good, safe searching?
- What sort of things can we use to judge how authentic a website is?
- Why is it important that we are careful to avoid fake sites?
How else can we judge and evaluate websites? What sets good websites apart from the bad ones?
Discuss how usually we want a website to be simple and easy to use, but sometimes a site with unusual and interesting design and artwork is great. The best sites have both! They look great and are easy to use.
Explain that this week we’re going to be evaluating websites based on appearance and ease of use. Our evaluations will be more based on opinion than facts in some cases, what’s the difference between fact and opinion?
Old Vs New
Look at the example of the changing Google homepage through the years, what is different in each version? What has remained the same all the way through? How could you describe today’s Google page? (bare, stripped back, clean, empty, clutter free)
Google in 1998
Google in 2020
You can see all the basic Google homepages through the years here
Web design has changed a lot through the years since the first website was published in 1991:
Compare the text heavy layout of early sites to modern trends such as:
- large background images;
- minimalist design (as little as possible on the page)
- flat graphics (3D buttons are not very fashionable!)
- Infinite scrolling (everything on one long scrollable page)
Have a look at these examples of modern sites with infinite scrolling, they’re very fashionable as they work well on mobile devices with touch screens.
Evaluating Design
Explain to the children that they are going to be looking at a number of websites and evaluating them. They are all news sites designed for children, though not all British, so perhaps point out that they won’t all have the same content for that reason.
Emphasise that we are evaluating them in terms of how they look and how they work, so don’t get caught up in or distracted by the content and stories on the sites.
We’ve made the following presentation to make it easy for your students to get to all the websites they need. All they need to do is type in this one URL:
This will open a presentation, then they just need to click on the images on the slides to get to each site, the sites will open in a new tab each time.
Kids' news sites
Ask them to have a good look around each homepage to begin with and get an initial opinion of how the sites looks. Then ask them to consider the following and complete their evaluation sheets:
- Does it look interesting? What features does it have?
- Is it obvious what you can find on the site?
- What makes it easy or difficult to find things?
- What things do you like / not like?
- Does it contain:
-
- video
-
- animation
-
- sound
-
- photos
- Is it a good site for its audience?
Research sites
Alternatively (or as well as) they could compare these three Space information sites, or you could choose three suitable sites that link to your current topic or theme:
www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/topics/zdrrd2p
Have a good look around each homepage to begin with and get an initial opinion of how the sites looks. Then consider the following and complete their evaluation sheets:
- Who do they think the main audience of the site is? Why?
- Does it look interesting? What features does it have?
- Is it obvious what you can find on the site?
- What makes it easy or difficult to find things?
- What things do you like / not like?
- Does it contain:
-
- video
-
- animation
-
- sound
-
- photos
- Is it a good site for its audience?
Plenary
To finish, have a look at your own school website as a group. Ask the children to consider who the main audience is for this site and evaluate how it looks and how easy it is to find key information on the site.
Ask them to look for some key questions, such as (change as necessary for your school site):
- How many after school clubs are currently available?
- How many classroom assistants are there at our school?
- What event did Year 2 take part in in January?
Do you like the school site? Is it well designed? Does it do its job of making it easy to find information about the school?