6 School Websites

I visited the school websites for two different schools. The first school I looked at was the high school I graduated from, Titusville High School (Grades 9-12) in Titusville, Florida. This site was posted through Edline as a host. I could not access any class pages since I did not have my own log in. I could only find basic teacher contact info, county wide information, and a calendar. The other school I looked at is called Astoria Park Elementary School in Tallahassee, Florida. I am a mentor at APES once a week for two hours in Ms. Sherman's kindergarten class. I could access more through this website than THS's website. I could see class schedules and a meet the teacher page. There were links to other sub sections, but they did not have any postings in them. It was still interesting to see a classroom website posted.

I really love learning about new tools for my future classrooms during this class. I have used class dojo for an ILP. Through that project I learned that I really like the tool and I hope to use it in the future. I will definitely use the Microsoft Office Suite, as outlined in the Podcast, on my computer very frequently in class and out of class to prepare lessons, rubrics, grades, worksheets, etc. I love the idea of having class blogs through a safe website like Kids Blog. I would love to incorporate Edmodo since it is a fun way to submit assignments and collaborate with other students. I will also need to use obvious other resources like e-mail to contact parents and colleagues. I want to create a class website independent from the school's, if allowed, using something like google sites so all of my resources can be easily accessed in one place. Through these tools I will be more organized in my classroom and more efficient as a teacher.

Through the Web Resource Evaluation assignment, I learned more in depth about how to use google sites. I used it as a platform to post media files and connect it to blogger in my last ILP. It was interesting to collaborate with two other people on the site. The only thing I did not like was that only one person could work on each page at a time, so we would have to take turns working on the front page introduction instead of all writing at once. I also learned about what criteria can help decide if a website is credible. It was interesting to see that the criteria can change slightly based on what age group and subject you are teaching. I hope to use this new knowledge as a base to design a classroom website in the future. I also will use this knowledge to create my own web resource evaluation cheat sheets for my future classes.