Updating Web sites March 29, 2008

I am very eager to learn how to create a web site, where students and parents have access to the classroom. The benefits include increased motivation, communication, parent participation, digital portfolios, pre-selected web sites, and much more. What happens when the teacher starts up the web site in the beginning of the year and rarely updates it? I feel that many teachers and schools are not updating their web sites to include the most current information. When really they are a few months behind! What happens with a single mom, working two jobs, that used to look up daily information about her child? That connection with school and the classroom is now broken. If you are going to create a web site, in order to reap the benefits, you have to maintain it and keep updating it. Many of the articles we read about classroom web sites mentioned the importance, but not the essential element? If you do create a web site try to stick with it, show you can be consistent, because looking at a web site could reveal your true teaching style!

skills to teach students February 16, 2008

I really enjoyed last class about the “fake” web sites. Looking at the end of the URL really makes a difference. I knew that .edu was an academic site because that is where I go to check my email and look up infomation on education. The other  endings like .gov and .com, I had no clue what they were and never really cared. Now I understand the importance and that .gov or .edu are more reliable sites. The wayback machine is helpful to see old web sites. I went back to my high school web site in 2000 to see what it was like and it was amazing. I never knew we even had a web site when I was in high school! I was disappointed to find only a few hyperlinks worked. I can’t wait to use what I’ve learned in a classroom. I was never allowed to use web sites for research papers and now I can teach my students that some web sites are permitted as long as they take the steps to check the site.