What Makes A Good Website?

Assignment: Locate five websites related to the Iditarod and rate them.

That's the task given to the Web Design class. But how much of a site's usefulness depends on the end user's needs? None of the class was very excited about a dog sled race thousands of miles away in Alaska. In fact, none of them would every look for those sites unless I had assigned it. Is it more of the "build it and they will come" or build what people want? The latter may account for the plethora of fluffy, sugar coated (web) junk out there.

It seems that there is almost as much variation in methods for evaluating websites as there are ways to make them. I directed the kids to Five Criteria for Evaluating Web Pages as a guide in their own evaluations. Ultimately, the goal is to spark in them the desire to create new and innovative websites instead of simply finishing the task that has been given.