AskERIC
Celebrating its 10th year: One of the greatest educator resources online!
Grade Level: Professional
http://www.eduref.org/Virtual/Qa/archives/
CONTENT: AskERIC is a comprehensive resource of education information with over 3000 resources, 2000 lesson plans, and more than one million abstracts of documents and journal articles on education research and practice. It encompasses the resources of the entire ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) system, including the sixteen ERIC Clearinghouses, and is part of the Information Institute of Syracuse at Syracuse University.
AESTHETICS: The site uses few graphics but the use of color and spacing makes it attractive.
ORGANIZATION: AskERIC can be navigated in a variety of ways. The collection of resources is grouped into thirteen categories and listed on the homepage. The left side navigation menu gives access to the other areas of the site. At the top of the page users will find links to the search tool, topics list and a tour of the site for first time users.
REVIEW: For educators, this is the most famous lesson plan source on the Internet, and even those of us at Education World (we actually have more than 2,000 lesson plans ourselves!) can’t argue with this reputation. But AskERIC isn't just a lesson plan site. Although there are over 1000 lesson plans here that have been submitted by teachers, it also contains a Question and Answer service with archives, a resource collection on every topic imaginable for educators, a mailing lists archive, and a seemingly endless database of education information. Lesson plans can be browsed by subject area or searched by keyword and grade level. Included in the lesson plan section is a guide for developing a lesson plan and guidelines for submitting your plans to ERIC along with a section featuring the latest plans. Ask an ERIC Expert offers a live chat with a librarian and a link for students to find homework help, The mountain of information in the database can be searched with a simple or advanced search and includes links to a thesaurus, information on citing materials, how to obtain full text and a list of the journals abstracted. This is a top-notch educator site that is celebrating its tenth year (!) on the Internet.
