Where I Went/What I Did:
This week I spent the majority of my time completing my website. I had to make final changes and decisions. Here it is the last week to work on it and I still find myself making changes. Which I think is a good thing because I want it to be the best work I can offer. So that means changing and moving things around up until the last minute. After spending the last few weeks on this website I have decided that this is something that I want to keep up and running after this class if over. This website will be a great communication tool between me and my parents.
What I Learned:
This week I learned about the site LiveBinders. Last year I attended a Singapore Math Conference and during the conference the speaker gave us the link to her livebinders account which had all the resources she used during the presentation. She also had other resources saved here as well. This was the first time that I had every heard of this site. When I got back to school I visited her binders and was amazed of all the information she had saved there. To be honest I did look much farther into this site after that. So when we had to use it this week I begin playing on it again. It took me a few times of playing around on it to figure out how to post my screen shot to the class binder. However, I did figure it out. This site is great especially for teachers! It is wonderful because you can organize all your materials and resources in one place. This is something that I want to use to help organize my own things.
What I Decided About My Website:
Like I mentioned before I had to make my final decisions on my website this week. After receiving feedback on my site I went to changing and fixing the things that needed it. One of the first things I did was to upload resources to my parent page. I want this to be a place my parents can go to get important information about things in my classroom. After I worked on this page I went to work on my class photos page. I had one picture that was loading slower than the rest even though it was the same size as the rest. So I decided to change some of pictures so that they all would load at the same time. The last thing I worked on this week was my homepage. I added a picture of my family and some contact information to the top of the page. Since my homepage is the first page visitors will see I wanted it be a place with reminders on it. I also liked the idea of having student birthdays posted here as well.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I am going to continue and finish my website. If time allows me I want to work on creating my own binder on the LiveBinders website. I have so many resources that I use in my classroom that I think this will help me be more organized.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Sunday, April 20, 2014
Week #6 548 Journal
Where I Went/What I Did:
This week I spent some time reorganizing my website. It seems that each week I keep finding or coming up with new ideas. I can't begin to count how many pages I have created and then deleted because I just didn't like them. I have really come to love Weebly! It makes creating this website so easy and fun to. I can easily change any page and create and delete pages with ease. This week I spent a lot of my time playing with the different fonts that are available through Weebly. I really liked how I had many choices and could change the fonts on all the different design elements on my pages. I wanted to choose a font that was easy to read but still looked really good on my pages. I am really liking the way my pages are turning out.
What I Learned:
This week I learned a lot about Twitter. To be honest I have a Twitter account and get on it everyday and read others tweets. However, I think I have only composed 2 tweets in the 2 years I have had an account. I am an avid Facebook user and post things on this site on a regular basis. I feel more comfortable using Facebook, but I have never been real comfortable using Twitter. I think it is because I really never knew how to use it to its fullest extent. One thing I learned during my readings this week was about all the different education conversations that take place on Twitter on a weekly basis. I had not clue that there was a chat feature like this on Twitter. I saw one that was #ipadchat about how to incorporate ipads into the classroom. They meet on Wednesdays from 1-2. I think this would be something that would be cool to try once. There are so many educational Twitter chats to choose from.
What I Decided About My Website:
As it gets closer to the due date for the completion of the website I find myself still make changes. I am just trying to get it exactly how I want it and how my parents and students will be able to use it with ease. This week I decided to use the button feature on my fun links page. I think this makes it easier for those who visit the site. While creating these buttons I made it so when someone clicks on it to go to the website it will open it in a new window. I like this feature that way they never lose my website when trying to go to a new one. I have to say I really am liking the way my website is coming together.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I am going to continue to work on my website. I am going to find some free clipart to include and/or take more pictures of my class. I am also going to see if I can find some more information of the Twitter chats becuase this would be something I would be interested in trying one day.
This week I spent some time reorganizing my website. It seems that each week I keep finding or coming up with new ideas. I can't begin to count how many pages I have created and then deleted because I just didn't like them. I have really come to love Weebly! It makes creating this website so easy and fun to. I can easily change any page and create and delete pages with ease. This week I spent a lot of my time playing with the different fonts that are available through Weebly. I really liked how I had many choices and could change the fonts on all the different design elements on my pages. I wanted to choose a font that was easy to read but still looked really good on my pages. I am really liking the way my pages are turning out.
What I Learned:
This week I learned a lot about Twitter. To be honest I have a Twitter account and get on it everyday and read others tweets. However, I think I have only composed 2 tweets in the 2 years I have had an account. I am an avid Facebook user and post things on this site on a regular basis. I feel more comfortable using Facebook, but I have never been real comfortable using Twitter. I think it is because I really never knew how to use it to its fullest extent. One thing I learned during my readings this week was about all the different education conversations that take place on Twitter on a weekly basis. I had not clue that there was a chat feature like this on Twitter. I saw one that was #ipadchat about how to incorporate ipads into the classroom. They meet on Wednesdays from 1-2. I think this would be something that would be cool to try once. There are so many educational Twitter chats to choose from.
What I Decided About My Website:
As it gets closer to the due date for the completion of the website I find myself still make changes. I am just trying to get it exactly how I want it and how my parents and students will be able to use it with ease. This week I decided to use the button feature on my fun links page. I think this makes it easier for those who visit the site. While creating these buttons I made it so when someone clicks on it to go to the website it will open it in a new window. I like this feature that way they never lose my website when trying to go to a new one. I have to say I really am liking the way my website is coming together.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I am going to continue to work on my website. I am going to find some free clipart to include and/or take more pictures of my class. I am also going to see if I can find some more information of the Twitter chats becuase this would be something I would be interested in trying one day.
Sunday, April 13, 2014
Week #5: 548 Journal
Where I Went/What I Did:
I began this week by looking at what I had completed so far on my website. After learning about the different design features in class this week I was paying close attention to my alignment and proximity. I have always be someone who centers everything when typing and I had centered some things on my website. However, after class this week I saw how nice the left alignment looked on web pages and how easy it was for visitors to read. So I went through my website and changed my center alignment to a left alignment. I think it really made a difference in the appearance of my website.
The next thing I took into consideration this week was the use of "white space." To be honest this was something I never really paid much attention to before. After class this week I really saw how white space can be used effectively. White space can make a page and website look more organized and make it easier to read for those who visit your page. So again I went back to my website and looked to see if I had made use of the white space correctly.
After looking at these design elements I then began work on my photo page for my website. I uploaded some class pictures to my computer and then edited them use the preview tool on my Mac computer. I played with the sizing and cropping tool this week just to get a feel for what I was doing. I then uploaded several pictures to my site. I used the gallery feature on Weebly which made organizing these pictures on the page so easy.
What I Learned:
This week I read several great articles that were centered around the design of websites. During the reading of one article I came across something called Goggle Fonts. I have to be honest I love having different fonts to choose from when typing things on the computer, so I of course had to check out this site. Google Fonts in a site which offers free fonts that can be used on your website. There were so many different ones to choose from and all you had to do was just add them to your collection. From there you get a code that you can use to upload it to your website. This where I got stuck because I couldn't figure out how to use on the Weebly website. I will continue playing with it this week because I really liked all the free fonts that were offered. Before this class I thought I knew a lot about Google, but it seems each week I am learning more about all the wonderful things it can actually do.
What I Decided About My Website:
It seems like just yesterday I was making the site map for my website and trying to decided exactly what I pages I wanted. Now here I am working diligently on it each week to make my plans come to life. This week I really focused on getting some of pages completed. I now how my upcoming events, start student, fun links, daily schedule, and photos page completed. I have to say that I am very please with the way my website is turning out. Like I mentioned above I really paid attention this week to all the design elements and making sure everything was organized and easy to read.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I will continue to work on my website. I want to get some resources for my parents added so that they will have a place to go when they may need help. I also want to visit a google hangout and learn about how they are used. This week I also plan on visiting my classmates websites to see how their progress is going and maybe to get some new ideas for my own.
I began this week by looking at what I had completed so far on my website. After learning about the different design features in class this week I was paying close attention to my alignment and proximity. I have always be someone who centers everything when typing and I had centered some things on my website. However, after class this week I saw how nice the left alignment looked on web pages and how easy it was for visitors to read. So I went through my website and changed my center alignment to a left alignment. I think it really made a difference in the appearance of my website.
The next thing I took into consideration this week was the use of "white space." To be honest this was something I never really paid much attention to before. After class this week I really saw how white space can be used effectively. White space can make a page and website look more organized and make it easier to read for those who visit your page. So again I went back to my website and looked to see if I had made use of the white space correctly.
After looking at these design elements I then began work on my photo page for my website. I uploaded some class pictures to my computer and then edited them use the preview tool on my Mac computer. I played with the sizing and cropping tool this week just to get a feel for what I was doing. I then uploaded several pictures to my site. I used the gallery feature on Weebly which made organizing these pictures on the page so easy.
What I Learned:
This week I read several great articles that were centered around the design of websites. During the reading of one article I came across something called Goggle Fonts. I have to be honest I love having different fonts to choose from when typing things on the computer, so I of course had to check out this site. Google Fonts in a site which offers free fonts that can be used on your website. There were so many different ones to choose from and all you had to do was just add them to your collection. From there you get a code that you can use to upload it to your website. This where I got stuck because I couldn't figure out how to use on the Weebly website. I will continue playing with it this week because I really liked all the free fonts that were offered. Before this class I thought I knew a lot about Google, but it seems each week I am learning more about all the wonderful things it can actually do.
What I Decided About My Website:
It seems like just yesterday I was making the site map for my website and trying to decided exactly what I pages I wanted. Now here I am working diligently on it each week to make my plans come to life. This week I really focused on getting some of pages completed. I now how my upcoming events, start student, fun links, daily schedule, and photos page completed. I have to say that I am very please with the way my website is turning out. Like I mentioned above I really paid attention this week to all the design elements and making sure everything was organized and easy to read.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I will continue to work on my website. I want to get some resources for my parents added so that they will have a place to go when they may need help. I also want to visit a google hangout and learn about how they are used. This week I also plan on visiting my classmates websites to see how their progress is going and maybe to get some new ideas for my own.
Sunday, April 6, 2014
Week #4 548 Journal
Where I Went/What I Did:
I began this week by looking for some clip art to use on my website and to add to my DropBox folder. I wanted to find some images that would fit my theme of an elementary website. I did find some great pictures that I plan on using. I also added some family pictures to my images folder. After I added my images I began looking for some interactive sites to add to my social bookmarking site (eduClipper). I had three great sites in mind that we use at our school regularly. The first site I added was one call Reflex Math. I just recently received a grant for a full years subscription to this site. Reflex Math is a website that is designed to improve math fluency. I know for my own students this is an area of weakness. I am really excited to get my students started on this program. Another site that I added was one that our school received a grant for this year called i-Ready. It is a math and reading program that is aligned to the Common Core Standards. The third program I added was Reading Eggs. This is a program designed for Kindergarten and First Grade students. I have been using this program for several years and my students always love it. The last website I added was ABCya. This is a free website with interactive games for students in K-5 in both reading and math. The last thing I did this week was to work on my own website. To begin I looked at some of my classmates websites. I like to look to see what ideas other people have. I have to say I saw some great websites that I believe will serve as wonderful classroom websites.
What I Learned:
One of the articles I read this week was How to Tell if A Website is Dangerous. In this article I learned about a URL Risk Analyzer and a Web Inspector. Before this article I had never heard of these before. This is such a great tool to use when you are not sure of a website. In today's world you have to be so careful of the sites that you visit. There are so many sites that appear to be a legitimate site but are very dangerous. I really like the Zulu URL risk inspector site. I actually bookmarked this on my computer so that I would be able to access it easy. This article was one that I want to share with others so that can be aware that not every website is a safe one.
What I Decided About My Website:
I spent some time this week just playing with all the different tools that are available on the Weebly site. I did this because I have never create a website before and I really did not know what options I had available to me. Needless to say I created many things and deleted many things this week. However, after all the playing was over I created all the pages that I wanted on my final website. I spend most of my time this week deciding on how I wanted my pages set up. I worked a lot on my student and class news pages. I added some photos and some fun links. I have to say that creating this website has been really fun. I realized that this can be a great communication tool between parents, students, and the teacher. It is because of this I want to make it the best.
My Plans for the Week:
This week my plan is to continue working on my website and adding more content. I am going to continue to look at other websites so that I can get some more great ideas. I am also for my own benefit going to add some more sites to my social bookmarking site so that I can always have them handy no matter what computer I am on.
Where I Went/What I Did:
I began this week by looking for some clip art to use on my website and to add to my DropBox folder. I wanted to find some images that would fit my theme of an elementary website. I did find some great pictures that I plan on using. I also added some family pictures to my images folder. After I added my images I began looking for some interactive sites to add to my social bookmarking site (eduClipper). I had three great sites in mind that we use at our school regularly. The first site I added was one call Reflex Math. I just recently received a grant for a full years subscription to this site. Reflex Math is a website that is designed to improve math fluency. I know for my own students this is an area of weakness. I am really excited to get my students started on this program. Another site that I added was one that our school received a grant for this year called i-Ready. It is a math and reading program that is aligned to the Common Core Standards. The third program I added was Reading Eggs. This is a program designed for Kindergarten and First Grade students. I have been using this program for several years and my students always love it. The last website I added was ABCya. This is a free website with interactive games for students in K-5 in both reading and math. The last thing I did this week was to work on my own website. To begin I looked at some of my classmates websites. I like to look to see what ideas other people have. I have to say I saw some great websites that I believe will serve as wonderful classroom websites.
What I Learned:
One of the articles I read this week was How to Tell if A Website is Dangerous. In this article I learned about a URL Risk Analyzer and a Web Inspector. Before this article I had never heard of these before. This is such a great tool to use when you are not sure of a website. In today's world you have to be so careful of the sites that you visit. There are so many sites that appear to be a legitimate site but are very dangerous. I really like the Zulu URL risk inspector site. I actually bookmarked this on my computer so that I would be able to access it easy. This article was one that I want to share with others so that can be aware that not every website is a safe one.
What I Decided About My Website:
I spent some time this week just playing with all the different tools that are available on the Weebly site. I did this because I have never create a website before and I really did not know what options I had available to me. Needless to say I created many things and deleted many things this week. However, after all the playing was over I created all the pages that I wanted on my final website. I spend most of my time this week deciding on how I wanted my pages set up. I worked a lot on my student and class news pages. I added some photos and some fun links. I have to say that creating this website has been really fun. I realized that this can be a great communication tool between parents, students, and the teacher. It is because of this I want to make it the best.
My Plans for the Week:
This week my plan is to continue working on my website and adding more content. I am going to continue to look at other websites so that I can get some more great ideas. I am also for my own benefit going to add some more sites to my social bookmarking site so that I can always have them handy no matter what computer I am on.
Saturday, March 29, 2014
Week #3 548 Journal
Where I Went/What I Did:
The first thing I did this week was explore some social bookmarking sites. I have never used one of these sites before so I wanted to view all my options. I started out using the site diigo because I found it very user friendly. After I creating my account at diigo I began researching informational sites for teachers and students to bookmark. I bookmarked some that I already use in my classroom, but I was also able to find some new ones as well. One new one that I really liked was WatchKnowLearn. This website was full of free educational videos for all ages. I had never seen this site before, but it will be one that I will use in my classroom in the future. After I had created my diigo account I then read about the site eduClipper which was very similar to Pinterest. I began playing on it and decided I liked it much better than diigo. I was able to create a board for this class and share it easy with others. On the diigo site I was having a hard time figuring out how to share my bookmarks with others. Another reason I liked eduClipper better was that it saved a thumbnail of each website so this helped me remember what was on each one. This site also offered the option of adding a class and assignments for a class. I could see this being very beneficial for older students especially.
After creating my social bookmarking site I went and created a Weebly account to begin working on my website. I really like the Weebly site because it makes creating a website so easy. I began working on the design and color scheme that I wanted to use on my site.
What I Learned:
This week I learned much about how to evaluate web sites that I visit. In the technology driven world that we live in today it important to realize that anyone can add content to the web. So we have to be very careful in what we believe. In the reading Evaluating Websites it states that one way to evaluate a site is to look at where the sites live. For example the extension .edu means that the site is from an educational institution. Another example of an extension is .gov which means the site is from a government agency. Another way to evaluate a site is to look to see how current the information is. When were the links on the site last up date or are any of the links dead? It is also good to look at copyright dates to see if it is a site that someone updates on a regular basis.
This week I also leared about social bookmarking sites and how wonderful they are. I always bookmark sites to my computer at school but the problem was when I was at home I did have those same sites safed on my laptop. With the social bookmarking sites I am able to save these sites and acces them from anywhere.
What I Decided About My Website:
Once I decided on using Weebly as the my site creator I began to design some of my pages. I decided that I wanted to make some changes to my site from my original thought on my wireframe. On my wireframe I put too many buttons/tabs on my homepage. I have now decided that I don't want all those buttons. I only want the following buttons: home, parents, students, and class news. This seems much more organized to me once I went back and looked at it. This week I also completed my About Me page where I gave my readers a little background information about myself. I also created a contact page in which I added a form that my readers could complete.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to spend some more time getting some of my favorite websites saved to the bookmarking site eduClipper. This is a wonderful time saver because I can access it from any computer I am on. I also want to continue to work on my website and get firm plan I what I want it to look like.
The first thing I did this week was explore some social bookmarking sites. I have never used one of these sites before so I wanted to view all my options. I started out using the site diigo because I found it very user friendly. After I creating my account at diigo I began researching informational sites for teachers and students to bookmark. I bookmarked some that I already use in my classroom, but I was also able to find some new ones as well. One new one that I really liked was WatchKnowLearn. This website was full of free educational videos for all ages. I had never seen this site before, but it will be one that I will use in my classroom in the future. After I had created my diigo account I then read about the site eduClipper which was very similar to Pinterest. I began playing on it and decided I liked it much better than diigo. I was able to create a board for this class and share it easy with others. On the diigo site I was having a hard time figuring out how to share my bookmarks with others. Another reason I liked eduClipper better was that it saved a thumbnail of each website so this helped me remember what was on each one. This site also offered the option of adding a class and assignments for a class. I could see this being very beneficial for older students especially.
After creating my social bookmarking site I went and created a Weebly account to begin working on my website. I really like the Weebly site because it makes creating a website so easy. I began working on the design and color scheme that I wanted to use on my site.
What I Learned:
This week I learned much about how to evaluate web sites that I visit. In the technology driven world that we live in today it important to realize that anyone can add content to the web. So we have to be very careful in what we believe. In the reading Evaluating Websites it states that one way to evaluate a site is to look at where the sites live. For example the extension .edu means that the site is from an educational institution. Another example of an extension is .gov which means the site is from a government agency. Another way to evaluate a site is to look to see how current the information is. When were the links on the site last up date or are any of the links dead? It is also good to look at copyright dates to see if it is a site that someone updates on a regular basis.
This week I also leared about social bookmarking sites and how wonderful they are. I always bookmark sites to my computer at school but the problem was when I was at home I did have those same sites safed on my laptop. With the social bookmarking sites I am able to save these sites and acces them from anywhere.
What I Decided About My Website:
Once I decided on using Weebly as the my site creator I began to design some of my pages. I decided that I wanted to make some changes to my site from my original thought on my wireframe. On my wireframe I put too many buttons/tabs on my homepage. I have now decided that I don't want all those buttons. I only want the following buttons: home, parents, students, and class news. This seems much more organized to me once I went back and looked at it. This week I also completed my About Me page where I gave my readers a little background information about myself. I also created a contact page in which I added a form that my readers could complete.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to spend some more time getting some of my favorite websites saved to the bookmarking site eduClipper. This is a wonderful time saver because I can access it from any computer I am on. I also want to continue to work on my website and get firm plan I what I want it to look like.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Week #2 548 Journal
Where I Went/What I Did:
I began this week by researching more classroom websites. I was trying to get an idea of exactly what I want on my own website. I found out that there are some really great websites out there that teachers use on a daily basis. I mainly visited first grade websites, since that it what mine will be. I noticed that most of the first grade sites did not have the learning activities that I read about last week. I guess this is harder to do for the younger students. Many of the sites had links to websites and games that the students could visit. Many of the sites also had a place where student pictures and classroom pictures could be shared.
After visiting many different sites I began work on my site map for the website I want to create. I made mine using PowerPoint because it was the easiest way that I could find. After I decided what kinds of pages I wanted on my site I then began work on my wireframe. I visited a couple of free sites for this like Lumzy, Mockingbird, and QuirkTools Wires. I played with all three sites and decided to use the QuirkTools Wires site to create my wireframe. It was actually very simple to do and took no time at all to complete the wireframe.
What I Learned:
The article Designing Your Web Site from the Bottom Up was a great read this week. Before reading this I would have never thought about making my home page on my website last. I would have started there instead of finishing there. From this article I learned the importance of planning out your website. It's hard to start any project unless you have the end in mind. One idea I really liked from this article was putting a navigation bar on each page so that users can easily get back to where they want to go from any page. In the reading Platforms and Tools I gained some knowledge about what software programs are available to help me create my website. I had heard of several of these sites like Wikispaces and Moodle. I have never actually used one my self, but I have visited sites that use them. I wonder if there is one that is more easy to use or if there all about the same?
What I Decided About My Website:
This week I got a better feel for what I want my website to look like. I decided that for my website I want a home page, a page for a parents, a page for students, a class page, and contact me page. I also got an idea about what I want on each page. For example on my parent page I want a place for News and Events. I want this to be a place where parents can go to see a calendar of events and get up to date information about what is happening in our classroom and school. On my student page I want to have links to websites that we use regularly in class as well as some other ones that can visit. I also want a page where I feature the student of the week. On the Our Class page I want a place for our daily schedule and some class photos. I know that do be able to have photos of students on my page I am going to have to send home a permission slip form to the parents. I feel really good this week knowing that I have a better plan for what I want my website to look like.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to do some more research on the different ways that websites can be created. I want to find one that will be simple to use but yet allow me to do all the things I have planned. I am also going to continue to look at more classroom websites to see if I can get anymore good ideas.
I began this week by researching more classroom websites. I was trying to get an idea of exactly what I want on my own website. I found out that there are some really great websites out there that teachers use on a daily basis. I mainly visited first grade websites, since that it what mine will be. I noticed that most of the first grade sites did not have the learning activities that I read about last week. I guess this is harder to do for the younger students. Many of the sites had links to websites and games that the students could visit. Many of the sites also had a place where student pictures and classroom pictures could be shared.
After visiting many different sites I began work on my site map for the website I want to create. I made mine using PowerPoint because it was the easiest way that I could find. After I decided what kinds of pages I wanted on my site I then began work on my wireframe. I visited a couple of free sites for this like Lumzy, Mockingbird, and QuirkTools Wires. I played with all three sites and decided to use the QuirkTools Wires site to create my wireframe. It was actually very simple to do and took no time at all to complete the wireframe.
What I Learned:
The article Designing Your Web Site from the Bottom Up was a great read this week. Before reading this I would have never thought about making my home page on my website last. I would have started there instead of finishing there. From this article I learned the importance of planning out your website. It's hard to start any project unless you have the end in mind. One idea I really liked from this article was putting a navigation bar on each page so that users can easily get back to where they want to go from any page. In the reading Platforms and Tools I gained some knowledge about what software programs are available to help me create my website. I had heard of several of these sites like Wikispaces and Moodle. I have never actually used one my self, but I have visited sites that use them. I wonder if there is one that is more easy to use or if there all about the same?
What I Decided About My Website:
This week I got a better feel for what I want my website to look like. I decided that for my website I want a home page, a page for a parents, a page for students, a class page, and contact me page. I also got an idea about what I want on each page. For example on my parent page I want a place for News and Events. I want this to be a place where parents can go to see a calendar of events and get up to date information about what is happening in our classroom and school. On my student page I want to have links to websites that we use regularly in class as well as some other ones that can visit. I also want a page where I feature the student of the week. On the Our Class page I want a place for our daily schedule and some class photos. I know that do be able to have photos of students on my page I am going to have to send home a permission slip form to the parents. I feel really good this week knowing that I have a better plan for what I want my website to look like.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to do some more research on the different ways that websites can be created. I want to find one that will be simple to use but yet allow me to do all the things I have planned. I am also going to continue to look at more classroom websites to see if I can get anymore good ideas.
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Week #1 548 Journal
Where I went/What I did:
This week I was able to visit some new classroom websites. Many of these sites I had visited before, but I found some new ones as well. One website that I really liked was called TeachersFirst (http://teachersfirst.com/index.cfm). This site was organized nicely and offered many great resources for teachers. One of the resources that I liked was the Featured Sites box. They give their readers a quick glance of suggested sites and what grade level they are appropriate for. I liked that it is right there on the homepage and easy to see quickly. As I was reviewing all the different sites I noticed that some of the sites were not as well organized as others. Some of the ones I visited had way to much information on the homepage which made it difficult to find what you were looking for. There was one site that had so much information on one page I still am not sure what that site had to offer.
What I Leaned:
As well as visiting the websites I also read some great articles this week. In the first reading The Internet and Web Design for the Modern Teacher I learned about the two different types of websites: instructional and informational. Most classroom websites are informational because they contain information about procedures, homework, news from the classroom, other information relating to the class. The other type of website is the instructional sites, which are classroom websites that have "learning activities" build into them. According to the reading very few teachers do this well on their websites. I would like to learn some strategies to be able to do this well on my own website. Would this be difficult to do since I teach first graders? In thinking about this question I think about the second article I read Children's Websites: Usability Issues In Designing for Kids. This article conducted a study that showed that kids today are "much more experienced in using computers and Internet." Kids are being exposed to technology at a much younger age in today's time. So does this mean it should be easier for teachers to create learning activities for their websites, even if they teach the younger children?
What I decided about my website:
As I was reviewing all the different websites this week I got some great ideas for my own website that I will be creating. I would really like for my home page to be very organized, not too much information on one page, colorful and an easy to read font, and tabs that will lead visitors to the different pages of my site. The article 10 Tips for an A+ Classroom Website listed some great ideas that I want on my site. These include creating a place for parents to contact the teacher, a place to acess homework files, the classroom blog, and the daily schedule. I want it to be a site that parents, students, and other teachers would want to visit.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to continue to visit some more websites and get a better idea of what I want to do on my own. I am going to continue to work on my blog and become more familiar with its features. This may be something I want to use for my classroom in the future.
This week I was able to visit some new classroom websites. Many of these sites I had visited before, but I found some new ones as well. One website that I really liked was called TeachersFirst (http://teachersfirst.com/index.cfm). This site was organized nicely and offered many great resources for teachers. One of the resources that I liked was the Featured Sites box. They give their readers a quick glance of suggested sites and what grade level they are appropriate for. I liked that it is right there on the homepage and easy to see quickly. As I was reviewing all the different sites I noticed that some of the sites were not as well organized as others. Some of the ones I visited had way to much information on the homepage which made it difficult to find what you were looking for. There was one site that had so much information on one page I still am not sure what that site had to offer.
What I Leaned:
As well as visiting the websites I also read some great articles this week. In the first reading The Internet and Web Design for the Modern Teacher I learned about the two different types of websites: instructional and informational. Most classroom websites are informational because they contain information about procedures, homework, news from the classroom, other information relating to the class. The other type of website is the instructional sites, which are classroom websites that have "learning activities" build into them. According to the reading very few teachers do this well on their websites. I would like to learn some strategies to be able to do this well on my own website. Would this be difficult to do since I teach first graders? In thinking about this question I think about the second article I read Children's Websites: Usability Issues In Designing for Kids. This article conducted a study that showed that kids today are "much more experienced in using computers and Internet." Kids are being exposed to technology at a much younger age in today's time. So does this mean it should be easier for teachers to create learning activities for their websites, even if they teach the younger children?
What I decided about my website:
As I was reviewing all the different websites this week I got some great ideas for my own website that I will be creating. I would really like for my home page to be very organized, not too much information on one page, colorful and an easy to read font, and tabs that will lead visitors to the different pages of my site. The article 10 Tips for an A+ Classroom Website listed some great ideas that I want on my site. These include creating a place for parents to contact the teacher, a place to acess homework files, the classroom blog, and the daily schedule. I want it to be a site that parents, students, and other teachers would want to visit.
My Plans for the Week:
This week I want to continue to visit some more websites and get a better idea of what I want to do on my own. I am going to continue to work on my blog and become more familiar with its features. This may be something I want to use for my classroom in the future.
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