The effect of my classroom website increases globalization of our world (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). My classroom website has the potential to allow parents, students, teachers, and people from around the world to participate in activities and communicate with each other about health and fitness. Having access to hardware, software, and connectivity does not necessarily mean student learning will occur; it is how you use the technology that is important (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). Not only do I need to have my website working properly, I may need to teach students how to use it properly.
I will need resources to carry out my GAME plan. I will need to have electronic copies of documents so I can upload them to my classroom website. I will need to get approval from parents if I am going to use any pictures of students on my classroom website. I will need time to continue to develop my classroom website, such as creating questionnaires and surveys.
There is additional information that I need. For example, I will need to see if there is certain district approved software and/or regulations when using this technology. Does our school district have an approved list of blogs that we can use? How will I efficiently monitor and respond to blog postings and to the increased communication that my classroom website encourages.
I have been able to take a few steps so far. I am in the process of creating and modifying my classroom information. So far I have a calendar of upcoming events, a few documents, and links to other websites.
I will continue to develop my GAME plan in the future. My classroom website could be a great communication tool to offer flexibility in the methods and settings in which students can communicate with one another, teachers, and experts (Cennamo, Ross, & Ertmer, 2010). Blogs and emails could increase collaboration and communication between students, teachers, and parents to help student learning and student success.
Cennamo, K., Ross, J. & Ertmer, P. (2010). Technology integration for meaningful classroom use: A standards-based approach. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, Cengage Learning.
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I think a classroom website is a great resource for parents to understand what their child is doing in school and have a quick resource for them to look to when wondering about their student's progress. Instead of having to schedule a parent teacher conference, or deal with an awkward telephone call, parents can now send an email, or now check your website and thus become informed about their child's progress as well as what is going with the class or school. Great job!
ReplyDeleteBrian,
ReplyDeleteIt looks like your GAME plan is moving forward. Are you able to house your website on your school's servers or are you using an external source to house the site? I have been looking at different options, but it appears some of the better website builders for teachers such as http://www.schoolworld.com/teachersites.cfm cost money.
I love the idea of students and parents having the ability to connect to the teacher through the site. Even better, is the idea of students collaborating with peers and experts from all over.
Shannon Eno
Brian,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post from this week and last week. I think your website is going to be great and is a great fit for a P.E. classroom. In your classroom, computers might not be able to be used by students every day, but creating a page that students can access out side of school will be a way that they can use their computers at home to keep up with and continue the learning from your class. Once you get a lot of the details established I was wondering if this was a site that you would update daily for each grade level or one page for every grade? I was just thinking of the challenges involved with posting content for various grade levels and was wondering what you were thinking for your classroom?
Jason Henne
Brian,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link to your website from last week. It definitely gave me great ideas and I think that you set it up in a very student user friendly way. I was wondering if there were other teachers within your school that have set up websites and if so, how were they received by your school community?
Many of my parents struggled with their education and did not have the opportunity to finish high school, let alone attend college. I was thinking that inviting them to a training session on how to use my classroom website many be a good idea to eliminate an questions as well as introduce them to this new technology. As Corey mentioned above, this would be a great way to communicate with parents outside of the classroom.