Since my retirement, I have not been using my website, Teach the Children Well, as I did in the past with my students. I made the decision to keep it up so that others would have this resource available to them.
I had been using Link Checker software until it stopped working with one of the system upgrades. I have tried various other software solutions, but so far, I have not found one that just gives me a list of the broken links.
Anyway, when the COVID 19 outbreak began, in March of this year, I realized that the website was a good resource for parents who were now at home and trying to provide educational materials for their children as well as for teachers who were now faced with creating Distance Learning.
In order for the website to be useful, the links needed to work. I realized that the best way to be sure that all of the links were valid, was to click on each one of the over 14,000 links on the site! I began in late March, and worked almost every day until finally completing checking the last link this morning!
During this process, I fondly revisited some of the sites I had used with my students since I started teaching elementary technology in 1997. I also decided to mark the sites and activities that I had created myself.
Some of the sites have disappeared, some have been purchased by other companies and had their names and URLs changed. Other changes were more disturbing. A few sites had been taken over by pharmaceuticals and were advertising "enhancements". A few formerly math sites have now been taken over by pornographic or phishing sites. Some have become Chinese game sites or Arabic sites or casino sites.
Many of the Flash-based activities have been removed from the web. While I recognize that Flash is considered to be a security risk, it also provided good hands-on learning for children. HTML5 is supposed to replace the need for Flash, but many of the developers have not bothered to convert their activities to this platform. Some of the Flash sites have now been converted to YouTube videos, but the passive experience of watching a video does not provide the same educational benefit of the interactive Flash experience.
I am happy to have finally finished this undertaking. It was a good project during the quarantine. I am glad that I did it and hope that others will find it helpful.
