Jessica LaClair's List: Renewable Energy

This gateway starts with a small explanation of each of the top seven renewable energy sources. You can further your search on solar energy, wind energy, hydrogen, and ocean energy by clicking on their numbered links. At the top there is an option to see more about renewable energy, solar power, wind energy, ocean energy, and global warming. This is a great way to learn about all the different types of renewable energy sources that we have because this gateway gives a general explanation of the different forms of renewable energy. You can also click further into the gateway for a deeper understanding of each reusable energy source. This is a great gateway for students in the higher middle school level, and lower high school level.

This gateway is a wonderful starting point for teachers and middle school students to get to know some forms of alternate energy/renewable energy. The links within the directory are easy to understand and very straight forward with the great information on renewable energy such as solar, geothermal, biomass, hydropower, and wind power. There are also separate categories at the top of the directory that are specific to one renewable energy source. If the students want to find out more information on one specific renewable energy, it's right at their fingertips.

This directory is geared toward middle/high school students. This gives examples of renewable energy around the home, and how to become green. The tenth website displayed has an informative video clip on the website, as well as valuable information on solar and wind energy. Students may become distracted within the website because they have websites that do not pertain to the topic at hand. This directory has a section called featured sites, and sponsored sites that don't have anything to do with renewable energy.

This directory has great resources geared toward higher student reading levels in middle and high school. This gateway would be great for teachers to learn more information about renewable energy before they create their lessons. Each page you navigate to within the directory, it tells you to "see also" to direct you to a similar page. The one danger with this directory is weeding through all the business websites promoting use of their renewable energy products. If students are looking for types of businesses that sell renewable energy products, then this is a great place to start.

This directory has some very useful information, but beware that it is harder to weed through all information to find the valuable information you are looking for regarding renewable energy. This would be a great tool for teachers to use to find information for understanding to be used in lesson plans. The webpages would be appropriate for students in high school, and middle school, however it may be challenging for middle school students to navigate through the webpages to find what they need.