Interview Field Experience

I interviewed three teachers and the results were surprisingly similar. All of them said a well organized website is the best. It needs a simple layout that is easy to understand and navigate. They need to be able to find information easily. One teacher said if the site was color coordinated that would be ideal. This particular teacher has a completely color coordinated classroom, so I wasn’t surprised by this. I also enjoy color coordination in my life, so I can relate.

The main thing that turned them off to a website was difficulty in finding information. If the site was too wordy, or badly organized, or took too long to load they would simply switch sites. If the site was too cluttered with information, or unnecessary graphics, or too many bells and whistles that made it hard to find things they would leave that site. One of the teachers said she never uses sites that can be changed by anyone, like Wikipedia, because the information isn’t necessarily credible. I expected this answer from someone. People bash on Wikipedia, but I personally think it is a good resource. If I need a fact quickly I almost always go to Wikipedia first. I also have my third graders use Wikipedia because it is one page of compacted information and they don’t need to do too much searching around. I also use it as a lesson in analyzing information you find on the Internet and not just taking everything you see as truth without verification. My students are also eight years old. If I taught older students I probably wouldn’t let them use Wikipedia. Another teacher was very adamant that if she found a misspelling or improper use of grammar on the site she would stop using it immediately. She said she didn’t trust information from people who use the wrong “your.” I completely agree with this.

Overall, the teachers had much more to say about why they would leave sites than why they would use them. I found this interesting. They all clearly had experienced poorly designed websites often.