A product of the R&D phases of National School Network (http://nsn.musenet.org), the Web Site Evaluation Form sets out process for providing a series of criteria that teachers, students and community partners can use to evaluate and categorize Web sites and Web-based curriculum offerings for their usefulness in the classroom and overall quality. The tool can be used to develop a database of valued resources by local communities of interest or by groups via the Internet.

The form has been used as a professional development tool by the Online Internet Institute (http://oii.org), in courses at Syracuse University and LeMoyne College, and within a consortium of schools in Central New York (OCM, BOCES). Discovered on the Internet by others, it was subsequently adopted (without our knowledge until reviews started coming in) by teacher educators at Vermont College and Northern Illinois University. This coupled with unsolicited reviews from individuals illustrates the inherent appeal of the project.

Instead of teachers or students "surfing the web", here they stop and examine specific educational qualities of a site (such as examples of student work). Reviews are then posted to an online database allowing others to search for sites that meet criteria (e.g., by grade level or subject area).

A discussion feature allows participants to discuss reviews and the usefulness of sites. Finally, individuals may request reviews of their web pages by others, providing a unique peer-review opportunity. This was field-tested by pre-service teachers at LeMoyne University who reviewed the technology page for Madison Metropolitan School District. Although scheduling problems prevented further experimentation, the plan was to use the functionality of the tool to allow someone from Madison to be online interacting wth reviewers as the reviews came in.

Detailed notes have been collected regarding how to maximize utility of the tool with groups of 15-20 students in a lab. An "instructors manual" could be developed so that the tool might be used more widely and successfully in professional development programs.

In sum, employing the form can be useful along many dimensions: developing a collection of peer-reviewed web resources, as an instructional activity for pre-service or in-service educators, and as a means of obtaining feedback on the quality of educational web sites.

Here are some comments made by teachers who have used the form:

• "The form was very easy to use and really made the user think about the page he/she was reviewing".
• "There are enough choices to pick from that allow for the web page owners to find out whether or not their page is effective."
• "I am looking forward to the day when I will be able to use this tool regularly to see what other professionals in my field are using".
• "This form provided plenty of opportunity to provide feedback in my own words and also assured that the pertinent questions were addressed."
• "A very useful reference for teachers."