The Education Development Center, Inc. is a large policy, curriculum, and material development and implementation organization headquartered in Newton, Massachusetts, in the metropolitan Boston area. In the mid-1950's, MIT faculty began the PSSC (Physical Science Study Committee) Physics curriculum revision project. EDC was formed in 1958 from the roots of the PSSC organization, with a National Science Foundation grant, and brought similar revision strategies to other subject areas and disciplines. Today, EDC manages over 250 projects in education, health, equity studies, development, and other areas. Site viewers can visit 50 project Web sites and access a wide variety of professional and personal resources, including curriculum materials, and register for EDC workshops and conferences.

The EDC front page is attractive, with intelligent management of color and various link text styles. The available front links are thoughtful and concise, and site navigation is well-planned, as a whole. The inside navigation bar on the left does not contain a standard "Home" link, which is instead found at the right of the top banner (which is a minor, and probably debatable, design issue).

However, internal content access is problematic at times. The keyword access in the "Themes and Projects" section allows a maximum of six selections, which can be limiting to some visitors, and the limit is not made known to the site visitor on the initial search page. Also, the section in which the search is being conducted is denoted at the top banner and not on the left menu bar. The visitor has to scroll up to the top of the page, to be certain about what section he/she is currently viewing. A standard menu bar color change or highlight, indicating the current search section, would be more useful. After a keyword request is made, a list of relevant projects is then displayed, with links to project Web sites. However, some projects do not have Web sites and only a project name is displayed, which can then be followed to a project description. In addition, some keyword requests may be met with server errors. It is not certain if there is any distinguishable pattern to the errors, but site visitors may be obliged to adjust the scope of their queries, to avoid possible search parameter limitations or database access errors.

Even if the keyword access is limiting at times, the "Projects with Web Sites" section is a treasure chest of information, ideas, and tools. The great scope of EDC can be seen here, with links to numerous EDC daughter organizations and dozens of project Web sites. For example, the Leadership and the New Technologies project contains numerous resources for district and school technology planners and implementers, such as online workshops and a news journal. The Mathscape Center is one of several curriculum sites that provide tools and ideas to educators at all scholastic levels. All said, EDC provides significant service in a wide range of fields. This site is certain to be interesting and useful to many people, on professional and personal levels.

All graphics are the property of the Education Development Center, Inc., and are being used with the permission of EDC, Inc.

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