Appearance 1.1.3

During this quest, I examined several online instructional sites and picked the ten that I thought were most visually appealing, or needed structural improvement.  Appearance and organizational structure are important, especially for students.  They should want to be on the website, and understand how to navigate through the material.  Because most people are visual learners, it is important to create websites that provide visual appeal.  Everyone is different in how they decide what is visually appealing.  Listed below are 5 websites that I thought met my personal preference.

1. CK12 - I thought the layout and structure of this website was exceptional.  It is easy to find exactly what you are looking for, and is categorized so that you can search by subject and topic. 
2.  Georgia Virtual Learning - This website is great for teachers to find excellent resources.  It is also easy to navigate so students could easily use this site to practice or view videos and explanations on their own.
3. Math IXL - I love this website.  If my students are struggling with a topic or need extra practice on a skill, they have used this website.  They can easily pick any grade level, topic, and specific skill that they need to practice.  My students also enjoy it because it gives them challenge problems when they reach a certain level and medals for answering a certain number of questions correctly.
4.  Khan Academy - The lessons on this website are organized by subject and standard so any topic is easy to find.  Users can also search whatever topic they are looking for and they have multiple videos to select from or practice the skill.
5.  Learn Zillion - This website was easy to navigate.  Once I selected math, I could select a subject and topic.  The high school students could easily do this on their own and view multiple videos on specific content.

There are also 5 websites that I think need to be re-structured to make it more appealing to the user.

1. Mountain Heights Academy  - This website was not horrible, but it was not as visually appealing as the other websites.  I also felt like it was not as user friendly.  The courses were very small at the bottom right hand corner where many users could miss it if they did not look closely.
2. Cool Math Games - While this website does offer many resources and practice for math topics, there is no order in how the concepts are found.  This is website that would need to be re-structured so that teachers and students could easily find the topic they need to practice.
3.  Cosmo Learning - This website was extremely busy and overwhelming.  I would recommend simplifying the items so that it is easier to navigate to the topic you are wanting to find. 
4. Enchanted Learning - I also felt like this website had too much going on when you open it.  Most users do not want to feel overwhelmed when they are searching on an educational website.  If the content is too difficult to find, many students will move on to the next website.
5.  FRIV4School - I am not sure what is going on with this website, but I think this is the worst one I explored.  There is no order or structure to the website, and I don't know what topics I am trying to learn.