DCX 130 Website Reviews

Website Review 1
BrainPOP - http://www.brainpop.com/


BrainPOP is an animated website that is educational to students. There have been comments on the website from teachers who use BrainPOP to educate and that their students love it. Because the visuals and the animations are very colourful and eye-cathing, a lot of students are very interested to learn from it.

So this website does not only focus on one area of study. It has many different topics on Science, Social Studies, English, Math, Arts & Music, Health as well as Technology. Students will find this even more interesting as they will then be able to go to just one website for all the subjects they are studying in school.

Under the Health section, that is where you can find more relating topics to food and nutrition. If you click on the Nutrition topic, there are further sub-topics like Alcohol, Body Weight, Carbohydrates, Fats, Food Safety and lots more. Under these sub-topics, there are information and even videos relating to topic. It makes learning much more fun and interesting for students. Teachers can use this website as a tool during lesson time.

There is also a section especially for educators / teachers where tips, tools and resources can be found. On this page as well, news and updates about BrainPOP are also posted. There are lesson plans only for teachers' usage but there are limited examples on there. It is still very useful to read about as it may just provide more ideas for teachers for their own lesson plans.

Conclusion
This website also encourages educators to share their resources, such as lesson plans, videos or any resource that can be useful on the site. I think that is one way for all educators to develop and become better to ensure education is delivered to the students in the best way possible. This is indeed a very useful website for especially teachers to introduce to their students for learning as well as sharing resources among other educators worldwide.

Website Review 2
Epicurious - http://www.epicurious.com/


Epicurious is not only a typical recipe website. The wonderful thing about it is that this site also contain articles and guides, the community page where members can add their own recipes to the site or just browse through those added by the other members. The best thing is? There's the video library! I'll be going into each of these sections each to further elaborate how they can be beneficial in teaching food and nutrition.

Recipes and Menus


At the Recipes and Menus page, you can search or browse for any recipe you would like. This is really helpful as it can help teachers to share some wonderful recipes that can be taught during practicals or even take a sample recipe for discussion in class about the different ingredients and the science behind it. This also helps to build up one's experience to give the recipes here a try.

Students also may find this website useful as it helps to give them ideas and tips for their food and nutrition assignments or even their coursework. I think looking at other recipes and other ways of cooking a certain recipe can provide inspiration and creativity for the students to learn.

Articles and Guides
Articles and Guides is another main category of the website where you can read and find out more on topics such as culinary travel where writers or journalists talk about favourite culinary spots in certain countries e.g. Discover Greece, or they would write about essential restaurant guides in some places e.g. Where to Dine in New York for the best dining experience there, and for this topic specifically, it basically gives an introduction first, after which there are more categories on this page of different types of dining such as high-end, budget, hotspots, favourites and classics.



Also check out this visual guide on Pasta. Very useful for teaching also.



Another interesting section under Articles and Guides is the Epi Log. This is where you can find food news and views from all over. It is like a blog with many different writers. Any news relating to food and culinary, be it personal or not are published here. There are also tips found in some of the entries which I think is very useful. Besides that, there is also a long list of food blogs on the left side menu for visitors to check out.

Resources


The above picture shows what is in the Resources page. It is very helpful for both teachers and students should they want to check up on a food or any word relating to food. Even methods of cooking like "saute" or kitchen equipments like microwave oven or what a "paring knife" is can be found in the food dictionary. There are over 4000 food terms available here.

Videos
My favourite section of this website is here. :)
I really found this section very beneficial as I get to watch not only cooking videos, but also technique videos! I would really like to have my techniques right before even being able to cook right. You can find technique videos to watch and learn. Examples of videos are like:

simple method of creaming



knife skills like julienning!



And I would just like to add another video, it can be found under the Celebrity Kitchen Tours section and this if of Isaac Mizrahi, a fashion designer, (remember him from AdFund??) and how he makes his own Mint Chocolate Chip ice-cream!



There are other parts to this video as well which can be found at the Epi Videos section under Kitchen Tours. :)
Do check out the other sections on the videos page, I would list them all out but then it would be too much and won't be exciting for you to check them out anymore!

Conclusion
I think that the videos are very beneficial because I feel that most teachers and students are more interested in watching to learn techniques and ways of cooking. It gives a clearer picture on how the processes are like. It's very interesting. However there are quite a limited number of technique videos on the site. Hopefully more will be added soon!

Overall, I would really recommend this website to others, both teachers and students alike as a resource for them to look for more ideas, tips and helpful techniques, as well as a large variety of recipes uploaded by people all over the world. You could even drop a comment on the recipes to discuss and make the recipe better. There are even forums for deeper discussions on relating topics. This website is a very extensive resource for teaching of food and nutrition therefore, do check it out!