The author is a Ph.D. student in Technology Education at the Ohio State University. The reviewed site is a portion of the online version of his 1995 master of arts thesis “Development of a Technology Education Guide to the Internet” and appears not to have been updated since completion of the thesis. The Table of Contents page for the thesis can be found at <http://ed1.eng.ohio‐state.edu/guide/contents.html>. According to his abstract, the thesis and his guide “will provide an operational definition of the Internet and related terms, options for connecting to the Internet, and point to a variety of computer networks that may be of interest to people involved in technology education” <http://ed1.eng.ohio‐state.edu/guide/abstract.html>. While the site guide is helpful as a stand‐alone web document, readers who want a context for this page and the field of technology education will want to read portions of the thesis <http://ed1.eng.ohio‐state.edu/guide/thesis.html> and visit the homepage of the Technology Education Program <http://ed1.eng.ohio‐state.edu/>.
While the layout of the web page is striking with green and white text against a black background, the text is hard on the eyes and very difficult to read. The page is a short list of sites that are deemed of value to technology educators and is categorized into six areas: Educational Resources, Educational Institutions, Government and Educational Organizations, Vendors, Informational Sources, and Magazines & Journals.
The page is divided by topic into six two‐column tables giving the name of the resource site and a brief annotation. Even though the page is organized in tables, the design is such that users viewing the page using Lynx or another non‐graphical browser will still be able to navigate through it with relative ease. (Each table becomes a separate paragraph with the link highlighted and the annotation following as part of the sentence. Long tables become long paragraphs, but are still fairly easy to read.)
One of the difficulties for librarians is that there are no selection criteria listed. A Yahoo search on February 18, 1997 for “technology education” yielded 1799 site hits and 116 category matches. It would be helpful to know why only 33 sites are included on the reviewed page and why the author thinks they deserve special recognition. It is also unclear who the intended audience is. The annotations do not say whether the site will be more useful to a technology educator in a school, to one in a research university, or to one in a corporate setting. Some of the sites seem obviously appropriate for inclusion (the ITEA Software Bank, for instance, which is an archive of public domain software and shareware on The Ohio State University’s Technology Education Program server), while others are less obvious. The choice to include the LEGO site was a less obvious one. The linked site is no longer being maintained. It was not the official homepage for LEGO products and was abandoned to avoid litigation over the trademark infringement. The site contains the attorney’s letter, dated March 25, 1996 <http://legowww.homepages.com/>. The reviewed web page was accessed February 14, 1997, so one wonders how regularly the author updates his page. No date is listed on his page, the “Table of Contents” document, or in the source code.
Generally the links lead the reader to useful sites, but the annotations could be stronger. The University of Loughborough is a leading center for design research, so technology educators interested in this area of the field will find useful material in the student projects and International Design and Technology Educational Research (IDATER) conference pages. The annotation for this site mentions IDATER, but does not give the full name of the conference (only the acronym). It suggests the author has not looked at the site, and does not provide navigation clues on how to find the IDATER page on the Loughborough site.
Sometimes the decisions of which table to assign a site are questionable. MIT (whose link has changed to <http://web.mit.edu/> is listed in the “Government and Educational Organizations” table rather than in the “Educational Institutions” table with other universities (the University of Loughborough, Virginia Tech, University of Illinois, and Ohio State). Including links to the Eisenhower National Clearinghouse, the ERIC Clearinghouse, and SciLink make sense in this category (although the SciLink URL is also incorrect ‐ telnet://scilink.org and type “guest” as login and password). The Smithsonian Institution is listed with “Informational Sources” rather than with “Government and Educational Organizations.”
In general, the sites included on this page are helpful for providing a jumping‐off point, depending on the kind of information sought. Perhaps the greatest value of the page, however, is in leading the user to other pages that are updated more frequently and include lists of other links and resources on the same general topic (i.e. education materials for K‐12 or graduate research into technology design). The Internet Technology Education Association (ITEA) is a good starting‐point; however, the link has changed to <http://www.iteawww.org/>. The reviewed site would be helped by either organizing the site according to an intended audience or by including such information in an expanded annotation. The glaring problem with the page, however, is the number of outdated links. Users who find a helpful internet directory on their own will want to use it regularly instead of this resource.
