When evaluating the resources for this Web page, the information to be
used had to be considered for both teachers as well as students. The
following criteria was used to evaluate
the search results for selection of the resources to include in
this project.
The following Internet sites were included in 
Evaluation Criteria for Selection of Resources
These five sites were included because they offer on-line help for students which will enable them to get homework help or math tips. These sites also include games and activities which are interesting and educational. In addition, they contain challenging and interesting information.
The following Internet sites were included in The Internet as a Resource for Teachers :
These eight sites were included because they contain either lessons and activities that are relevant to K-12 Mathematics or are links to mathematics resources on the Internet. These sites are also sponsored by educational institutions or others who are authorities on mathematics.
Sites which were included in the Subject Related Resources were considered to contain useful and accurate information that not only is relevant to the K-12 curriculum but is also in line with the NCTM Standards for Mathematics Education. A few of the sites included take a little too much time to load, but the educational value was deemed more important than the loading time.
Sites that were not included in this project did not meet the established criteria or were considered to contain duplications of material chosen from other sites.
I began my search for the sites I wanted to include in my Web page,
SEARCH STRATEGIES FOR
SELECTION OF RESOURCES
SEARCH STRATEGIES USED
After choosing the subjects I wanted to include in my Web page, I decided to begin searching for information using a variety of search engines in order to determine the types and number of sites that could be returned using given search phrases. I used the following search engines in searching the Internet:
I first searched the Internet using Yahoo because it is a Subject Directory which is very easy to search. I found that "phrase searching" using quotes produced results on target more often than Boolean Logic or using any punctuation between terms of a phrase. When the phrase "algebra I graphing" was used as a search query, ninety-seven web pages were returned. Most of the pages were not useful. They contained sites for Algebra textbooks, on-line courses, university courses, and a variety of other topics. Other search queries also proved to return mostly irrelevant information. Searching the Internet using Hotbot and Alta Vista and using similar phrases yielded the same type of results obtained with Yahoo.
I decided to search several databases simultaneously using the search engine MetaCrawler and search phrases, such as "algebra lessons". Again, most of the web pages returned were not useful. However MetaCrawler did return pages containing very good sites that I wanted to use for this project. The best sites were returned by the Metacrawler's search of Infoseek. I decided to complete a search using the Search Engine Infoseek, which contains a sub-searching feature for refining searches. Infoseek returned excellent sites and was also very easy to use. In addition, the web pages returned were labeled as to the quality of the page. This helped me determine which sites to include in my Web page.
The second phase of my search included using the subject directories of each of the search engines that I had chosen. The Directory Search of each search engine proved to be very productive. A large number of excellent sites, which were included in this project, were found using Yahoo's Directory Search and Alta Vista's Category search. Since Hotbot's Directory Search contained links similar to those of Yahoo as well as a link to the mathematics resources in the Yahoo directory, I decided not to use Hotbot. Infoseek's Directory Search was also very easy to use and produced excellent results. Searching the Infoseek Directory was faster than searching the other Directories because the topic of mathematics was sub-divided into subject headings making it easier to focus on a topic. I also found sites in the Infoseek Directory that were not listed in the other Directories that I had searched.
After finding most of the sites that I wanted to include in my Web page using the Directory Search, I began to check out the links included in several of the sites that I had found. Several of these links proved to be excellent choices for my page. I used the Evaluation Criteria that I had established for sites that were to be included in my Web page to determine exactly which sites that I wanted to use.
The initial search that I made to find information for this project took a very long time. If I had begun with the Directory Search, the amount of searching time would have been much less. However, I did find some very good sites included in the web pages returned by Infoseek's search engine.