SNAPdragon

the annotated web index by kids and for kids

SNAPdragon was conceived and executed by Yasmin Kafai and Philip B. Ender as part of a class on "Education and the Internet" for the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies in the Winter Quarter of 1996. As part of the course requirements, students interned in SNAP (School Networking Action Project) classrooms, assisting chhildren and teachers in using the Internet and in collecting the childrens' web evaluations.

Currently there is no concensus as how the Internet, in general, or the World Wide Web, in particular can best be used in classrooms. It certainly does not benefit children greatly to spend their classroom browsing time on sites devoted to television shows and pop music stars. Time would be much better spent having children focus on finding sites that are related to what they are studying in class and having them critically evaluate the sites.

SNAPdragon asks kids to work together to develop an annotated index of educationally related World Wide Web sites. The children benefit both from the information they find on the web and from the process of evaluating the sites.

The outer most level of categories were taken from the Dewey Decimal Classification System. The second level of categories reflect actual projects being worked on in the classrooms involved.

The categories in the prototype are not fixed, they are cetainly open to discussion.

Here is an example of some of the kinds of questions used:

1. What did you like about the web site?
   Why did you like the web site?

2. What did you learn from visiting the web site?
   What kind of information was there?

3. What else should have been included in the web site?
   What was missing from the web site?

4. Would you recommend the web site to other kids?
   How strongly would you recommend the web site to other kids?

5. What did you NOT like about site?

6. What was good for other kids to see?

7. What was NOT good for other kids to see?

The actual questions are still under development.

Rosponses from the kids are put into the following format:

The web site or page name or title
The URL for the web site or page
The evaluation itself
Firstname Lastinitial Age; [Firstname Lastinitial Age;] School, City, State, [Country]

Example:

Exploring the Planets

http://www.xyz.edu/planets/explore.html

This web site has the best pictures of Mars and Jupiter we have ever seen. Plus there was a lot of information about each planet in the solar system. And the moons too. I wish they had better pictures of pluto but that is hard to do. Any kid that likes space exploration will like this web site.

Danny G. Age 11; Karen C. Age 12; ABC School, Hometown, NB

The format of the responses is open to discussion

At the present time, only schools that participate in SNAP and other affiliated schools may participate. It is possible that in the future, SNAPdragon will be opened up to school children in general.

SNAPdragon Home Page

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