What makes a good teacher website? This shouldn’t be a lot of extra work. In fact, a good functional website can save time and energy and greatly help foster the classroom community. Sharing is caring.
Some examples
- Lindsay – art teacher – instructions for specific part of an activity (remove weaving from a loom)
- relevant content for parents and students
- frequent updates
- looks professional
- follows fair use guidelines
Getting started. What is easy to capture and share? Pictures of the kids at work, links to assignment information, online copies of papers that go home in backpacks, list of homework and in-class objectives.
Cool tools. WordPress.com is free (with ads, cheap without ad support). there are lots of free themes to chose among. All the content is nice and neat and looks very professional.
Interaction and feedback. Allow comments as an easy way to get feedback, Comments can be screened and monitored.
Online forms. Need information? Add a form that can be completed online. Avoids having to transcribe hard to read hand written information, so information is likely to be correct. This is especially important to phone numbers and email addresses.
Storage, reference, additional support. For those of us who are digital packrats and like to keep links and resources, saving the information online can be accessed by anyone from anywhere. Most site tools provide functionality for blog posts, pages, links and media storage. Categories, tags and search features promote easy retrieval even if you don’t remember the title, source or date.
Technology supported learning. With resources online, learners are encouraged to become more self-directed. They can use these resources to get help and direction anytime. If students missed school or need extra instruction, they can access the lesson online.
Perfect enough? This Sacramento State Rubric can be used for self-assessment and peer feedback to evaluate a Web site (or page). In addition, you can evaluate the Web site in accordance with the established policies and guidelines. Although it was published in 2006, it is still a good model.
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