As a teacher, you should always look at any sites you want your students to see before they do. This is especially crucial for younger students who will be unable to critically assess these sites and frequently accept everything they see or hear on a website as the truth. But as most of you know, the Internet changes all the time and you want to make sure the site is a good one when you need to look at it. The computer that hosts that site could be turned off or crashed, or the site could be gone altogether. The only way to find out if it is working is to check it out yourself beforehand.
Speed is another issue in determining accessibility.
It doesn t make much sense to waste your students time waiting for pages to load when you can find another site that loads much faster. It s probably a good idea to have a backup site or two in case the fantastic site you looked at yesterday is mysteriously gone or running painfully slowly when your students go there. Be sure to browse the site thoroughly when you look at it. Just because the first page works, don t assume all the links to other pages do as well. The entire site should be accessible, as well as links to other pages.