Lyke, Liane H.

The growth of primary educational websites on the Internet is astonishing. Although it is generally believed that websites for primary students and primary teachers are appropriate and useful, the fact remains that these websites are not regulated for their developmental appropriateness or their literacy content appropriateness. Using criteria based upon nationally recognized standards, this study examines the difference between educational literacy websites designed for primary students and those designed for primary teachers for developmental appropriateness and literacy content appropriateness. Also, this study examines data from primary student and primary teacher literacy websites for the degrees of compliance for developmental appropriateness and literacy content appropriateness, according to nationally recognized standards. Overall, this study finds significant differences between primary student websites and primary teacher websites analyzed are developmentally appropriate compared to 55% of the websites that are literacy content appropriate in compliance with nationally recognized standards. The findings generated in this study raise issues for educators, researchers, and policy makers. This study points to the fact that there is an immense need to evaluate the developmental appropriateness and the literacy content appropriateness of primary literacy websites