Website evaluation : Collegeboard.com

Mr. AC wants us to pick a website and write a review on it. Since we are all students who would be going to the U.S. to further our studies, I decided to pick a website that is very much related to ourselves. The first website that comes to mind is http://www.collegeboard.com/.

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Affiliation :

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Collegeboard.com is affiliated to College Board. The College Board is a not-for-profit membership association in the United States that was formed in 1900. It is composed of more than 5,700 schools, colleges, universities and other educational organizations. Hence, collegeboard.com is high on affiliation as it is by the College Board. It's partnerships with different colleges, universities and educational organizations provide the website with first-hand, accurate and up-to-date information.

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Audience :

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On the homepage of collegeboard.com, it has 3 different links that bring visitors to 3 different websites, which are sites for students, parents and professionals. Each websites contain different information that is useful to respective groups. For example, the students website has a lot of information about SAT™ and tools for searching colleges, where the site for parents covers more on finding college scholarships. The website is written in a way that could cater to the needs of different groups, with sufficient information. Hence it scores on this criteria.

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Authority :

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Almost all of the articles found on the website are written and published by themselves. However, they do have a corner called "Expert Advices" which contains quotes from representatives of schools. Credits are given to respective representative with their names, position and school names below the quotes.

Content :

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The content is well-organized. As we can see from the homepage, the content is categorized into 3 different areas (sites) to suit their audiences' needs. Visitors could just go to the area that fits their need without having to go through the websites looking for information they want. For example, a professionals/lecturers would not want to know about information for scholarships, hence the website for them contains no information relevant to scholarships but rather covers on education policies.

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Currency :

The site is updated. Information in the website is for year 2010, which is the latest. Example is shown in the photo below.

Design :

The design of the website is simple and clean. There is not too much information on the first page, and is visually pleasing. With seven millions students and parents viewing the site each year, it loads fast enough. The design of student webpage is more colourful and attractive, whereas the professionals webpage is simple, clean and sophisticated.

Webpage for Professionals Webpage for Students

Objectivity :

The information on the website is objective, as the information provided is directly from the College Board. There is not much advertisement on the page, only a small one is spotted and it is by the website itself and is useful to their visitors(students).

Chapter 1 Blog Reflection

Do you think the life of our human race will be prolonged or driven to extinction by computers? Why do you think so?

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I would say computers is undeniably going to drive human to extinction. With the world trend nowadays, where human beings are required to use computers since very young age (as young as kindergarten, my younger brother had his first computer class during that time), it is now a tool/toy that is indispensable in human life. The current generation starts using it when they start schooling and continue to rely on it for the rest of their life. Think about all the health issues brought up by overusing computers: impaired vision, repetitive strain injuries, neck and shoulder problem... More and more computer-related injuries and health hazards are reported each day. If we do no limit our computer usage and raise the awareness of possible health risks caused by computers, the harm computer brings us is going to outweigh the benefits it brings.

Would the human race survive if all the computers in the world crashed? Who would be most badly hit?

Human is totally going to survive if computer vanished from our lives. Computer has indeed helped us a lot and has made our lives easier in many ways, but it is not a crucial key in human survival. If that happened, undeniably our lifestyles would change dramatically, and the transitional period would be agonizing. However, people had been able to lead a good life without the help of computers in the past. I am sure after all of us get used to life without computers we could live a pretty normal life like those in the past, although it might take us a long long time to adapt to the new situation.

Those who would be most badly affected of course are IT-technicians and computer majors, and the IT-industry (Bill Gates might just go broke!). Their knowledge and skills would not be required anymore and there would be no jobs for them. Unless there are companies who seek computer engineers to manufacture/design new and better computers, else they would have to change their working sector.

Introductory Task

My name is Su Hwee and I have never tried blogging before. I was borned in KL, but moved to Klang when I was 7 and I stayed there since then. Computers help a lot in doing assignments; from information gathering to writing and submitting, almost every steps are done using computers! Hence to me, a college student now, it is kind of indispensible. I mainly use my laptop for assignments, random net surfing and stay in-touch with friends overseas, which I suppose hadn't make the most of it (>w<)

I had always wanted to know more about computers but never get the chance to...Okay that's an excuse :p To be frank, computer used to be intimidating to me (lols) But now I really hope to understand more about it since I am given a chance to. So my course expectation would be to learn the operation of computers, and how to fix them when problems with operation arise. I like maths a lot, and to me computer is somehow similar to mathematics. They both have principles underlying their working and operations. Im very interested to discover those principles! So, my attitude toward this course is quite positive. I could foresee I'll be able to learn lots of interesting stuffs =) Hope instead of stress, this course would give me fun!