J. McKenzie Hansen
Website Evaluation
CASTEP stands for Collaborative Accessible Self-directed Technology Education Platform
One website that I frequent is hrccl.castep.co. This website is the online portal for my EAST program that I run at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library. It was developed by B.J. Hansen.
Structure:
This website is very structured. Each page is easily accessible through the menu buttons at the top. It is easily navigable and is extremely organized–especially the Site Administration page.
Content:
The content on the page is extremely beneficial for everyone that is involved in my program–students, Facilitators, and Administrators. Most of the extremely important content on the site can be found under Forums. This is where I can update my students on what they need to do before our next meeting time. They can also ask questions. Because the users are in charge of the content that goes on there, it was very important to me and my web developer to make this easily accessible for me, my fellow Facilitators, and my students to use.
Design:
CASTEP’s design elements are pretty good. They are very clean and professional looking. There is not many distractions, which is good when you have a lot of important content that needs to be read. I enjoy looking at the little icons by each button, and I know my students do too. Because they are young, I know having the icons there helps the website appeal to them. I also like that the site’s nav bar has a transparent look to it. That is just a small little detail that I really like.
Behavior:
The website’s behavior does exactly what it was intended to do. It is a secure collaborative website that helps organize content for the program. Students can easily access their progress reports (and submit them), create projects, manage their projects, and write posts to their Facilitators and team members. Facilitators and Administrators are able to keep up with the projects that the students do in the program and share valuable information quickly.
I really like this site because it is safe, secure, and usable. There have been many things that I have wanted to change / fix, but I just send a long list to the web developer and he usually takes the suggestions and does something magnificent with them!