Features of educational websites Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Features of educational websites - Essay Example Moodle has a sister website called www.moodle.com which is mostly used for commercial purposes and to provide other services that are necessary for the development of the organization. Moodle provides a software package that helps the teachers or educators to make learning look easy. The emphasis is more on creating right environment for the educators to understand the nuances of teaching. Moodle claims the software package helps the educators to master in creative teaching and create effective online learning communities. The home page of Moodle is user friendly. The layout structure is not bad and browsing the website is not that difficult. On the left pane of the website all the services provided by the organization can be seen and can be navigated easily. The Moodle's publish yearly newsletter that helps users who are new to the website and provides much needed information about the activities and achievements of the website. The middle pane presents briefly what the website is providing to the users. Some of the information is highlighted and when anyone clicks on the highlighted image the user will be taken to the next page related to the topic he/she clicked. One of the important features of the website is users can navigate by selecting the preferred language. The website provides community discussions in English and several other languages such as Spanish, French, German, etc. From the standpoint, overall the site gives an average look. It's not attractive and does not have any special features to pull the traffic. Though it claims to be OSI certified, who knows OSI is. Nowadays websites are certified by some organizations that no one knows. Other important aspect is the information is not well organized. It looks as if all the stuff has been put together. They should have given space to put the information at right places. www.atutor.ca ATutor copyrights are reserved by Adaptive Technology Resource Center or in short ATRC. It is an open source web based Learning Content Management System or in short LCMS. It helps tutors by providing the necessary the tools to develop the presentation style. Installing the software package can be done in minutes and the LCMS has been designed with accessibility and adaptability in mind so that when students navigate through the module can understand the topic easily. One of the important features of this software package provided by ATutor is it can be updated easily. To give Atutor a new look custom templates can be developed with ease. With ATutor quick assembling, packaging, distribution and redistribution of Web-based instructional content, retrieving, importing prepackaged content and conducting online courses is made easy. Since the whole teaching method is based on graphical user interface system and web based applications browsing the website is easier. In general when a student misses a class, he has to get the information by borrowing fellow student's notes. But with ATutor even if the student misses the class he can come to the website at any time and can view information required just like in real time environment. Thus saving the much-needed time. Overall the site is good and provides the required features for the educators and tutors. The homepage layout structure is attractive