Also forgot to add, that I believe the work you put into your reviews is amazing also. Your work just seems so well done and just want to congratulate you again on a job well done. :-)

I think your reviews are great! I think you did a very thorough job on your topic and congratulate you on a wonderful post! In my opinion i think that maybe, even though it may seem redundant, you should have added in what anencephaly was on your personal review. Once again I think you did a wonderful job on your topic and your posts! Great work!

  To continue my research on anencephaly, I reviewed these websites completely. The two websites I chose to review are the EMedicine website and the Anencephaly info website. I chose these two because they seemed to me to be the most informative. These websites cleared a lot of questions I had going into this topic and I was able to answer all of them. One website coming from a medical field seemed pretty powerful and meaningful to my research. So, without further ado, here are my reviews.
  EMedicine contained an article by Dr. Robert Best, a professor at the University of South Carolina. It is very informative on this topic and the many others that it covers. It covers a wide range of topics and subjects, and is very informative on each. On anencephaly, however, it covers everything professionally from causes to "treatments" or helpful preventive medicine. This article that was posted is a way to inform women about this disability and how it can be prevented.
  Anencephaly is a disorder that forms early on in neural development. It is an absence of either the brain, spinal cord, or a combination of both. It is detected early, and the baby can develop "normally" but will not survive long outside the womb. I think it is important to be informed about anencephaly so as to take measures to prevent it. Once it happens, there is no going back, or maybe sometimes in a very exceptional case. Anencephaly is a sad thing to have to go through as a mother, but when informed about the topic, can be prevented or helped to cope with the situation.
  The two best features of this website are hard to say. I had a hard time finding only two to write about. I thought that the way the site was laid out was fantastic. It was not only easy to find where everything was, but it was so consise. Another part of the site that I thought was worth mentioning was the statistics that it gives. I believe when stats are given, it shows that they are real and not just made up about what they say. The other major thing that I liked about the website was its links to other pages that talked more about where Dr. Best was taught in South Carolina. I believe it added a professional touch to the website in my opinion. Also some websites to other medical sites were helpful in validating te information in this article. The worst things about this website were also really hard to come up with. I did not find anything wrong with the site as it was very informative and interesting to me right down to the bottom.
  I hope this is an encouragement to read this website and its information on anencephaly. Anencephaly can be stopped, if people take the time to understand how to prevent it.
  The second website that I decided to review was the personal stories of parents of anencephalic children on the anencephalie-info page. This website was posted by parents of an anencephalic child and others have added their own personal stories. I believe this website was posted to help parents through their grieving process. This website covers a very personal touch of the disorder presented and has many facts and figures and encouragement for those who are expecting a child with anencephaly. I really was touched by this website, and its personal touch to it.
  This website does relate back to anatomy as it is a neural tube defect. Formation of the brain and/or spinal cord occurs around twenty-one days and if not fully developed, becomes anencephaly. This site does talk about preventive measures and coping strategies of how to survive the loss of a child. I believe this site was more meaningful to me than any medical site would ever be.
  The two best features of this website are the personal stories and the facts about anencephaly. The stories were very touching and really brought the topic of anencephaly to light as how horrible it is. The facts and questions also on this site were very accurate according to medical websites. The questions and answers were superlatively informative and I enjoyed browsing through them. One of the worst thing that I did not find on the site was coping strategies. Maybe I did not look hard enough, but I believe those would have been helpful. Well, I believe the stories would have been helpful with coping. So, other than that, how can you negatively review a personal website?
  This topic was hard to do, but I absolutely loved it. Anencephaly is devastating, but it is real. I never knew how real until I did these reviews. I hope you get as much information out of this site as I did.

Heather,
interesting topic and websites. I think the anencephaly-info site has the most complete info and would be your best major website. I didn't see a website that seems like a good minor website. The children's hospital has a lot of info from a medium-size institutino. The eMedicine is like an encyclopedia article and the NINDS page doesn't have a lot of info, but comes from a branch of NIH so it's a huge instuttion. Maybe you could look for a personal story within the anencephaly-info site and perhaps use the eMEdicine site as a major website.

Be sure you tell us who is posting the website and why as per assignment instructions.
LF

Choose topic: 10 points
Find four websites: 20 points
Peer reviews: 10 points

Your first website is very informative; it has a lot of descriptive information about what anencephaly is.
The emedicine website was a bit hard to read, very descriptive and helpful, but I didn't want to read it...(not enough bells and whistles! :)
The third website you posted was AWESOME! very informative with personal stories, photos and help with the grieving process. Nice touch!
The last website you have listed is again very informative but not as easy to read: lots of information all on one page...

Great job!!!!

While doing research, I came across several disturbing images. I will try not to post websites that contain these images.

The first website I came across was the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. They were very helpful in describing Anencephaly and although they were brief, seemed to use detail as to the cause and treatment of anencephaly. This website led me to do further research into anencephaly.

http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/anencephaly/anencephaly.htm

This next site that I found went into greater detail about anencephaly and also included some statistics. I like this website because it has a greater amount if information on this subject matter.

http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic639.htm

This website includes stories and pictures of anencephalic babies. Their webdite has had a great impact on the research I have discovered on this subject. As it is only a website about anencephaly, it does not go beyond this topic, however, I have loved this website the most.

http://www.anencephalie-info.org/e/index.htm

And lastly, this website goes into some more detail and other questions women have about anencephaly. It does cover other topics in children disorders and is a good resource of information relating to other opics as well. This website, as a hospital, has proven to be accurate and in aggreance with other sites out there.

http://www.chw.org/display/PPF/DocID/34371/Nav/1/router.asp

I, Heather Ossler, chose Anencephaly because I was reading about it in a book that I recently purchased. I thought it was very interesting to see this neural tube disease where most of the brain and/or spinal cord can be missing. I want to research this more because it has to do with neural tube development in the embryo.