Edutopia

Edutopia (http://www.edutopia.org) is a website for The George Lucas Educational Foundation. George Lucas, the maker of //Star Wars//, started this foundation to find out what made the best, most innovative classrooms work. He believed that, “ project learning, student teams working cooperatively, children connecting with passionate experts, and broader forms of assessment,” could improve student learning. Edutopia serves as the channel of the foundation where these aspects are researched and discussed among educational professionals. The foundation also works to bring education into the 21st century through digital media. It’s mission states, “The George Lucas Educational Foundation is dedicated to improving the K-12 learning process by using digital media to document, disseminate, and advocate for innovative, replicable strategies that prepare students to thrive in their future education, careers, and adult lives.”

Authority of Edutopia is clear. It is developed by The George Lucas Educational Foundation, a foundation that is reliable and qualified to provide the information the site does. Contact information is provided. The email address is info@edutopia.org. The snail mail address is The George Lucas Educational Foundation, P.O. Box 3494, San Rafael, CA 94912-3494. No phone number or fax number was given. George Lucas himself speaks in a video clip, showing his qualification, credential, and giving background information as to why he created the foundation.

The purpose of the site is to serve as voice of the foundation. It spreads the word about “ideal, interactive learning environments” and allows “others to adapt to these successes.” The domain name “Edutopia” is a play on the words education and utopia. It shows that its purpose is to create the ideal educational world. The site is very well organized. There are tabs at the top of the page that allow you to navigate to specific areas of interest: browse by grade level, core strategies, videos, blogs, communities, and schools that work. Links are tied to the topic of the site. For example, the core strategies page takes you to an overview of the core strategies (comprehensive assessment, integrated studies, project-based learning, social and emotional learning, teacher development, and technology integration) where you can then navigate to a site specified for each strategy. In addition, there are areas of the website where members can post their own writings. Each of these links can be evaluated by other members and can be shared via social networks. The website as a whole is geared toward the entire educational world, but by choosing specific links, the audience can be narrowed down (grade level, educational area, etc.).

Edutopia is comprehensive. It covers all aspects of education, mostly due to the wide range of members’ submissions to the site. There are multitudes of information that deeply explore the specific subject being discussed. While I have not seen other websites like Edutopia, I believe that it must be the best of its kind. It provides its own information for some parts of the site (core strategies), but relies heavily on members for information. This makes it a strong collaborative site. If an article refers to an outside source, a link is provided that takes you there.

Edutopia is constantly updated and revised. Each article includes the date it was written, the date it was placed on the web, and the date it was revised. In addition, members are allowed to comment on the articles, keeping the conversation fresh and continual. The site is fully developed and new items are added daily.

Edutopia is a non-biased site. While the foundation does discuss what it believes to be core strategies, the ideas are not pushed on the reader. Also, with so many contributors, nearly every view on an issue is addressed and discussed. This is reiterated with comments from readers. There is little advertising on the site (2 or 3 small ads per page) and the ads that are there deal with education, so they are relevant. The site does encourage support of the foundation and Edutopia, but joining is free.

Information on the site is mostly reliable. Readers may take caution to recognize the author of each article. Not every contributor is a notable professional, so what is said must be taken with a grain of salt. However, the site is about sharing information, and readers must understand that the author is expressing his or her experience or opinion. When statistics or factual information is given, it is credited to its original author, but there are not reference lists or bibliography.

The site is extremely easy to use. The tabs are clearly marked, and articles are easy to get to. In addition, searching for specific information is easy. Another positive aspect of the site was that it automatically recommends articles that are popular and suggests articles that are similar to the one you are reading. It may take a while to get used to how to navigate the site to find what you are looking for, but the best tool to use is the search.

Finally, I would absolutely recommend this website, especially for collaboration. The site itself is a collaboration of information from educational professionals all over the world. It focuses on so many types of information that you could find anything you are looking for here. While you may have to be hesitant to completely believe what some of the contributors are telling you, you can still read about their experiences, what worked and what didn’t, and take away from it what you want. The site is also a great resource for modern education. That is, it really focuses on innovative practices that make learning interesting and fun. They are practices that children in the 21st century will gain from. - Anna Miles Smith