Welcome to the rating system.  Here you may find out how we score the sites listed in the Learning Sites page.  

You can submit your own if you would like, use the questions posted on this page to guide you to a conclusion.  When you are done, send them to me at rphilipc@netvigator.com or hkisgraphicarts@hotmail.com .  Please, no commercial sites (e.g. they want to sell something such as software or clothing etc.)

Most people overrate what they see nowadays, so I wanted to create something that will really put what I review to the test.  There are several different categories I use: 

Ease of use, Visual attractiveness, Volume of information, and References.

All of these categories are rated from 1-25, 1 being the worst, 25 the best.  

This is added up to make a number from 1-100, which is the overall score.  Any page with a score of 80 or above my be included.*

Ease of Use:

When you see the ease of use score, you are looking at how fast and efficiently you can navigate your way around the page.  The questions I use to guide myself to a conclusion are these:  How fast do the pages load?  Do all of the links work correctly?  Are they placed where they can be easily reached?  Are there direct links to everything?  If the page has a search box, how efficient is it?

Visual Attractiveness:

Visual Attractiveness is how appealing the page is to the eye.  Are colors used tastefully?  Is there too much clutter, and does that affect navigation?  Is the page engaging to the reader?  Does the page interact with the reader?

Volume of Information:

Volume of information simply means how much the author has put on the page.  Is there enough information to create a report?  Has the author filtered the information so that the most important points are addressed?  Are there reliable sources the author used to gather this information from?

References:

This has to do with the Volume of Information.  Information has to come from somewhere, and that place is a source.  Does the author give links to the sources that he gathered the information from?  Are they reliable?  Can they be easily accessed from the author's page?

*This is at my discretion.  If a site has excellent content that may be important, I will place it in the top 15** even if that site has done poorly in other categories.

**There may be only 15 pages at one time in these sites:  Young Children, Family Sites, and Homework Sites.