Evaluating Children’s Websites in Arabic language

The Internet is one of the most successful means of providing a rich learning environment, and children are among the most affected by that interactive atmosphere. The research adopted a descriptive approach using an evaluation card in a checklist form to evaluate general, educational content, and technical elements of Arabic- language children’s websites. The evaluation card included (17) domains and (127) items examining (20) Arabic websites for children representing the research sample. In terms of general elements, the research findings confirmed that accessibility and ease of use received the highest rating (93.33%), while continuous timeliness was the lowest (21.25%). In the elements of educational content, the written text was the highest (91.11%), while the interactivity was only (30.77%), and finally the technical elements, the written text at the highest ratings (93%), compared to video, animation and sound at the lowest rating (60.83%). Regarding the availability of key domains in the websites, technical elements received the highest percentage (71%), followed by general elements (62.58%), and the educational content elements were last (53.93%). The research main recommendations involved designing Arabic websites for children with their interests and developmental needs as well as benefiting from websites in the international settings, by avoiding the shortcomings and weaknesses revealed in the research results.