Every Teacher Has a Website (April Fools!)
Although EVERY teacher may be a stretch more and more teachers are dabbling with a web presence for their classrooms. Communication with parents and students is definitely improving. Many teachers recognize what a great resource we can be to our students when we make our lessons, PowerPoints, handouts and even our voices readily available to them. There are many commercial teacher websites where one can easily create a place for classroom information, however most districts are in agreement that teacher websites need to be hosted on district servers. I don’t know about you, but I do not have enough time to learn web site design, but I am always excited when you only need to drag and drop or copy and paste to create a decent web presence. In this “tuesdays”, I will highlight a fun and FREE way to make some engaging games and activities on your blog or website.
A creative website
ClassTools has a series of free FLASH educational games, activities, and diagrams. You add your content to the template and then you can copy and paste the code (that they create for you) into your school website. As of this writing, they have 15 available templates that include Venn diagrams, a colorful target diagram, a dust bin game and even a Living Graph. My favorite, so far, is the Random Name generator. That comes in really handy when the same students always raise their hand and you want to keep your students on their toes. (I made one for you to try on my blog by copying and pasting the code they gave me.) Be sure to check out the Source Analyser (can you tell it’s from England?) as a wonderful means to teach web site authentification.
An image to share
Office Online hosted “today’s clip” for April Fool’s Day. Not everyone is laughing.
A proverb
For April Fool’s Day - “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.” Chinese proverb
An encouragement
If you haven’t looked into having a web presence, I would really encourage you to consider it for the sake of your students. They understand how important the web is for gathering information and they would actually be reviewing what happened in class on their own time if they could do it ubiquitously! I want to give kudos to Osceola Districts Schools for just releasing a podcast server to the teachers just before Spring Break. Teachers who become district podcast certified are given a blog space where they can upload instructional podcasts to help their students learn in a 21st century manner. How is your district encouraging web presence for your teachers? If they are not there yet, perhaps you could encourage them to make space available for the teachers. The advantage is student learning will definitely be happening beyond the classroom walls when teachers make their materials available online. Let us know what’s happening in your district by posting a comment on my blog.
How do you do that?
What are the best practices for having a classroom presence online? How do you know what is safe and useful to your students? The best rule of thumb is to think about what you would like to find. Wouldn’t it be great if you had all your worksheets or activities available to parents and students? Could you imagine how you can eliminate the “dog at my homework” or “I forgot to bring my papers home” tired old excuses? When you start you web presence, KISS - Keep It Simple Sweety. Start with upcoming events, daily wisdom, and a few assignments or presentations that you have created. What are you favorite things you make available to your students on your web site? Let us know in our “tuesdays” Professional Learning Community.
What are teachers saying?
Tales from the Teachers in the Trenches
“Technology makes teaching so much more fun. It is just wonderful and I hope to learn more and more about how to incorporate technology into my classroom. I’m just scratching the surface and just learning, but look out because I’m excited about the potential. ” Patricia Pike, Auburndale Central Elementary, 2nd grade
As always, I am
Ubiquitously yours,
K
