Using your classroom website effectively

The idea of a classroom website certainly isn’t a new one. Seemingly hundreds of web-hosting companies are now catering to teachers, providing templates and websites designed specifically for the needs of the classroom. However, I have seen so many ineffective websites that are a pain for the teacher who created them, and ignored by parents and students who should be benefiting from them.

I can’t recommend or review any specific website, because I don’t use any of them: I have a google sites account that I use specifically for my classroom. Google sites does have a template specifically for teachers, but you don’t have to use it to create an effective website. It is easy to use and all you need is a google account to create one (and it’s free!).

There are so many ways that you can use your classroom website, so I thought I’d spend a bit of time here discussing different outcomes for your website and how you can achieve them.

(1) To communicate with students

• Post resources that you use in class (your syllabus, handouts, websites, videos) that your students can access from home.
• Post a google calendar with due dates and other important deadlines to serve as an additional reminder (or just post the due dates as a list)
• Share resources (websites, webquests, etc) that your students might find helpful in your course
• Post a word, quote, or thought of the day that is relevant to your course

(2) To communicate with parents

• Parents will also appreciate a calendar so they can help keep their children on task when necessary
• Post any materials that are being sent home, just in case they don’t quite make it
• Share links to websites that will act as a resource for parents

(3) To show off what your students have been doing

• Use your website to share your podcasts
• Link to your classroom blog so others can read what’s on your students’ minds
• Post a student of the week
• Post pictures of your classroom or students’ projects

(4) To communicate with other teachers

• Post lesson plans that you have had success with
• Share your thoughts on a particular approach or lesson
• Share professional articles or blog posts that you have found inspirational and important to your teaching

Remember to update your website regularly, a website can be amazing but it quickly becomes useless if it is not up to date.

Saving your mind, and your data

Those of you who have been reading over the past week will know that last weekend my computer crashed. As it turns out- not only did it crash, it crashed, drowned, caught fire, and spontaneously combusted all at the same time (figuratively of course). My 1.5 year old computer that I trusted with all my data is gone.

I was fortunate that tech repair was able to retrieve my hard drive for me, so I am now in possession of everything that I thought that I had lost, but it could have been much worse. To me, the greatest inconvenience was that for a week I was unable to access my information while tech services worked on it.

I am usually pretty good about backing up my data onto an external hard drive, but I certainly don’t do it every day (usually once every two weeks or so). For a teacher who is trying as hard as they can to go paperless, there is a lot that can be lost in two weeks.

Apple has a program called Timemachine for the Mac, which I would encourage apple users to use (it should be built into your computer software when you buy it). It saves your information onto an external hard drive (or where ever you choose). The best part is that you can go back to various versions of the file in case you accidentally delete or change a file in a way that you don’t want to.

A similar program for windows users (and one that I’ve decided to use) is Genie Timeline, a free program that is very similar to timemachine. I’ve only been using the program for a few days, but so far I’m impressed. It’s easy to use and set-up, and now that I’ve installed it and set it up, I don’t have to worry about it.

Of course it’s also important to save your information online in case of fire, damage, or theft.. but that’s another post for another time.

Apologies once again

Once again I’d like to apologize for being absent for the past couple days. I haven’t had a very good week.

I had my wisdom teeth pulled on friday morning, recovered quickly from that only to discover that my computer has some sort of major issue…. can’t seem to get it up and running again (and I’m usually pretty good at that). I’ll be taking it in to get repaired tomorrow- keep your fingers crossed for me!

My next blog post will be about the importance of backing up your computer regularly.

Absentee Blogger

Unfortunately my wisdom teeth have decided to be a bit rebellious, so I’ll be having them pulled tomorrow. I doubt that I’ll be in any fit state to review anything for a few days, but I might post some cool websites.

I just didn’t want you guys to think that I’d disappeared.

Ch-ch-ch-changes! Using the net to keep in touch with students

I just canceled our television subscription. We just don’t watch tv anymore, and we decided that what we do watch we would probably be better off without.

Now, I know what you’re thinking- what does this have to do with education technology? Well, I’ll tell you in on the secret.

Years ago, when I was in school, my parents would have never dreamed of canceling the tv. In my childhood the tv was our link to society. We watched the news on it, learned about pop culture from it, and discussed it with our friends and colleagues. As I was canceling my satellite dish, I wasn’t worried about this at all… more importantly I wasn’t worried about falling out of touch with my students as a result of my sudden lack of television.

I frequent a variety of websites that help me keep in touch with what’s new in the world. I’m pretty confident that I won’t be loosing touch any time soon. Here’s some of my favorite websites:

Reddit– Users provide all the content and up and down vote to determine where it is in the listings. Links are always fresh and you can select from a vareity of categories like “funny”, “politics”, “science”, “worldnews”, and “technology” If it’s happening on the internet, you’ll find it here.

Wimp– A great source for videos of all kinds

Digg– Similar to Redditt, but with less random user content.

Google News– (From the website) “Google News is a computer-generated news site that aggregates headlines from more than 4,500 English-language news sources worldwide, groups similar stories together and displays them according to each reader’s personalized interests.”

I also go to Youtube every few days and check out the front page. The “most popular” and “trending” videos are usually interesting (and my students almost always have heard about them).

These are the big ones, but I also check out my local newspaper’s website every once and awhile, and subscribe to a dozen podcasts that keep me up to date (I love podcasts, it’s like your own personal radio station).

What do you do to keep up to date with what’s going on in your students’ worlds?

My goals for my students

I became a teacher because I felt helpless. I saw the world changing so quickly, and I couldn’t figure out where I fit into all the massive differences I was seeing from one day to the next. Ultimately, I knew that the best thing that I could do was help prepare young people for those changes.

Integrating technology in my lessons is one of my favorite things about teaching, but I’m not under the illusion that will help my students be more adaptable. It won’t take long for the technologies that are new and exciting today to become old news, so teaching students how to use any one specific technology is kind of a moot point. In my opinion, the important thing is learning to be flexible to new things.

Like all teachers, I have goals for my students. Over the past few years I’ve endeavored to adapt them to be more in line with 21^st century learning.

What I want for my students:

• To be curious, to ask questions
• To be able to find information and determine if it’s reliable
• To be able to speak and write convincingly and succinctly

That’s it, only three goals- but they are 21^st century skills. I start every year by telling my students that many of them will likely end up in jobs that don’t even exist today… and then I ask them how I should prepare them for that. After some humming and hawing, I present them with these goals.

I hope the teachers who will one day teach my son have thought about how to prepare him for the world he will grow up in.

How do you accomplish 21^st century teaching? What are your goals?

TitanPad

Following my review of Scribblar I’ve decided to chime in on TitanPad, since the two compliment each other so nicely. Like Scribblar, TitanPad is a collaborative online tool, but unlike its whiteboard brother, it allows users to collaborate on word documents. It is a fantastic tool for teachers and one that I have used often.  It’s fantastic for teachers and students, and is free and requires no sign up (does it get any better?).

The technology: TitanPad

My impression: TitanPad is a simple online program that is exceptionally easy to use. Importing documents is easy (you can import from text file, HTML, Word, or RTF). If your document isn’t saved in one of those formats, you can copy and paste directly onto the website. As you go you can save your revisions, and you can go back and watch an accelerated video of your progress using timeslider.

TitanPad is awesome for teachers because it allows you to see each students contributions individually by highlighting their writing in their own color. You can also have students export their finished document as an OpenDocument so you can watch their timeslider to see their writing process.

TitanPad would benefit from built in voice chat, and it is limited to word documents only (no images can be added). However, it’s very efficient in its simplicity and I’ve enjoyed using it with my students.

Possible uses in the classroom/ Lesson ideas:

TitanPad is great for having students collaborate with other classes in different cities, or with students in different classes in the same school. My favorite application so far has been having each of my students log onto the website in the computer lab, projecting my screen, and having a class collaboration with all of us right there in the same room. We wrote a great class story this way and the students thought it was the coolest thing ever.

Pictures:

Where can I learn more?

www.titanpad.com

Rating: 5 stars

Don’t forget about our contest! Only two days left to enter. Two lucky teachers will win a copy of Termites seating plan software. Save yourself time and organize your classroom!

Keep your students safe online

Just as the internet is an exciting place full of opportunities, it is also full of danger. As educators it is not only our responsibility to expose students to new things, but also to make sure that they’re safe. Fortunately, keeping students safe online is mostly a matter of common sense, good supervision, setting limits, and communication.

• Dedicate a class to what is expected of your students while they are online, and make sure you enforce the rules. If your school has an IT acceptable use policy make sure that your students (and their parents) have signed it and that they understand the consequences of behaving irresponsibly.
• Make sure that you are aware of what your school allows and forbids when it comes to online learning. Some schools do not allow pictures of students or their full names to be posted online (for obvious reasons).
• Make sure that you are always present when students are on the internet in your class to ensure that they are staying on task and that they aren’t looking at inappropriate websites.
• Read the privacy policy of any website that you are using for your students. I give preference to websites that my students don’t have to register for or provide any personal information.
• Ensure that any website you are using does not allow confidential information to be readily available to the online world.
• Students should only communicate online with people who the teacher is aware of (if you are using Scribblar, for example, only students participating in the project should be part of the collaboration).
• Parents should always be aware of what their kids are doing online. Stay in contact with them!
• Be aware of (and educate yours students about) cyber-bullying. Consequences should be just as severe as bullying in the classroom.
• Thoroughly review any websites that you are going to require your students to use or that you are going to show your students.

Other resources:

Cyber safety for teachers

A bunch of links on internet safety

Safety tips for podcasting

Scribblar: collaborative virtual whiteboard

Scribblar has been getting quite a bit of attention from bloggers and twitter users lately. This is all for a good reason, it’s a great program! I started using Scribblar at the beginning of this school year, and I don’t think I’ve even tapped the surface of the possibilities in the classroom.

The technology: Scribblar

My impression:

Scribblar is a great program because it’s relatively easy to use if you’re familiar with programs like paint (and really, who isn’t familiar with paint these days?). It has a lot of uses, especially to teachers and students.  It didn’t take me very long to learn how to use the program, and my students picked it up easily.The students enjoyed being able to collaborate online, and thought it was really neat that they could use chat or speak to other participants directly. Students can easily save their whiteboard sessions, as well as a transcript of their chat sessions, which is very helpful when grading. As an added bonus, students don’t have to register an account to use the program (but you have to register to be the administrator of one).

That being said the program is lacking several features that would be very helpful. The biggest issue that I have is that the program doesn’t have an eraser feature (though it does have an undo button and you can delete entire shapes as well). It would also be helpful if there was some kind of user guide or video tutorial available on the site. It would also be really nice if you were able to record the entire session and play it back (so I could see what the students were up to and their process). Finally, it would be awesome to be able to import word documents to edit them collaboratively, rather than only be able to import pictures. This ability is available through other sites such as titanpad, however it would be beneficial to have it built into this program as well.

Possible uses in the classroom/ Lesson ideas:

This website is fantastic for e-learning and for having your students collaborating in groups.

It would also be very effective for homework help, tutoring, or having a student help with a group project while they are absent from school.

My most successful moment with this website has been a group project that my students participated in with students from 3 other schools in different cities. The students were able to brainstorm topic ideas, determine which members of the group participated had what responsibilities, and how they would complete their task. The students had a meeting with their group on Scribblar once a week, and I was able to grade their participation easily by reading their chat transcript and viewing their snapshots. The students loved using the site and it made a mundane project very exciting for them.

Pictures:

An empty whiteboard room

An example of a collaboration

Where can I learn more?

www.scribblar.com

This blog post from Instructional Design Fusions

The education technology blog

Educational technology guy’s blog

Rating: 3 stars