Evaluation on Smithsonian Museum website

The first impression when I first opened the Smithsonian Museum website is that it gives me a totally different impression that I would expect from a museum website. Most of the time when the "museum" word flashed pass my mind, I would related it to "boring". But to my surprise, the website actually captures my attention with all the interesting images being displayed.

Coverage
The interesting thing about this museum website is that the scope of it targetted audience is pretty broad to the extent that it even covers on kids as well as interns who wants to gain some experience after their stay in their school. It totally differs from the traditional museum where it only targets at adults AND only adults.

Content
The other thing which I like the most is the content that they covers as all the information are being categorized accordingly. Other than providing exhibits, this website is also a place for people who wish to learn more by entering the "Explore & Learn" section. In this section, they have information that is almost similiar to what is on the Discovery Channel and the content that they cover are practically anything under the sun.

Usablility
The website are arranged in a neat manner as such that me being a first timer to enter it website, I am able to navigate around without any hestitation. All the main links are neatly presented on the top on the website. The use of appropriate colors to differentiate from one column to the other. It also provides a sitemap and searching facility for users who wish to get information on their fingertip as soon as possible.

_______________________________________
After evaluating this website, I would give it a rating of 7.5/10 as all the content are being presented nicely for user to navigate with ease. The lost of 2.5 marks are mainly due to lack of animation which could lift up the atmosphere of this website to make it more interactive and attractive to user.

---

Describe in a paragraph, the most important lesson that you had learnt in the process of developing your UIR Portfolio.

During the journey of UIR as my CDS, I learnt several precious skills in finding resources pertaining to the topic I wish to look for. As for the most important lesson that I have learnt, I would say that all the things that I have always been learning during lessons are as important. However, I would like to point out a specific lesson which is the use of operators along with the keywords which will return me results that are much useful and relevant to the topic that I wish to look for. These operator are "AND", "OR", "NOT" and use of ' " " ' to narrow down the results that is being returned to me. And what I notice that all the operators use are similar to what I have been always been doing in my diploma subject which we do our java programming. Therefore, with the knowledge that I have acquire during my programming lessons, I am able to relate it and use it for my searching ability.

I would like to point out the other lesson that I wish to point out other than the use of operators in search keywords as I felt it also affect the way I look at sources from the website. In the previous lesson where we are required to evaluate on website. I felt that by using this evaluation method, I am able to identify the reliability of the sources. This is important as during my stay in polytechnic, I am required to do research on the internet for report purposes. With this knowledge, I am able to do a much more reliable report which are extracted from an authorized sources.

With this 2 lesson I had mentioned, I will end my post on my "Most Important Lesson". =)

---

Lastly, Thank everyone for helping me in learning during UIR especially my tutor who have been very helpful even though I always been late for lesson =). I will always miss UIR as it is the best CDS that I have taken over even though it is my 4th CDS that I have taken.

Please don't be mistaken that I failed one of my CDS that's why I taking the 4th CDS. It is due to the reason that I taken my Global Citizenship CDS during the holidays to pull up my grades. =)