Class Website- A Communication Tool

At the end of last school year I had a wonderful training with the amazing Leigh Kite on technology integration in the classroom. She put to rest the following rumor that had been instilled in me since college. 

Not everyone has a computer at home, so we shouldn't ever ask students to use technology at home.....

While it may be true that many students in our high poverty school district do not have a computer with internet access at home the VAST majority have access to a smart phone or tablet. Why should we neglect optional technology-driven communication and homework simply because a few students do not have access? 

Let me be clear-I am not advocating any practice that would humiliate or ostracize any student for their lack of internet access. A great tip that I learned during the class was to add a line on your info sheet at the beginning of the year asking "Do you have internet access at home by computer or smart phone?" Then make a list of which students are going to require paper copies-keep it posted by your computer. 

All that being said, one of the projects I tackled this summer was a class website. It was very easy to do! And, I do not consider myself to be very tech savvy. Much of the layout was inspired by Leigh's website  .

FYI It is still very much a work in progress. However, I wanted to share some of the main points. At Leigh's suggestion I used Weebly.com. It seems to offer the most FREE options for web design. However, I jumped the gun a bit and created mine before her training. She shared with me that there is also a Weebly Education site builder that may be better for student profiles and such. 

http://msclarks2ndgrade.weebly.com 

This is the homepage. At the top you will see that I have organized the pages into Home, Showcase, Announcements, Day to Day, For Parents, For Students. When you click on each heading there is a drop down menu of subheadings below. 

Under the Home heading you will find Meet Miss Clark, Donors Choose-which links them to our class projects on donorschoose.org , Standards-which links them to the state standards, and a contact me page. It was very simple to create this page by dragging and dropping text boxes, pictures, etc.

The Showcase button takes you to a slideshow of pictures. I plan to use this page to post pictures taken throughout the year. Our district uses a generic photo release form however I plan to use a specific one detailing the purpose of the website for next year. All of these current pictures were taken by a professional photographer when GOOGLE visited my classroom, so we have permission to use them. 

Under the Announcements tab parents can access the Class Calendar which is simply a Gmail calendar that I set up, and then followed Gmail's instructions for embedding it into a website. Very easy. Also, when I log in to Gmail to add events it will automatically update it to the class website. There are also links to the class newsletter which is not posted yet and a link to the school calendar.

The next section-Day to Day is not completed yet because there are still many unknowns about next school year. However, I have pages for the schedule, Homework (pictured below), and a page for each subject area. I plan to post links to interesting websites or videos relating to the current concepts, photos of activities or projects etc. 

Under the For Parents tab there are useful links to the school menu, pay for lunch online, forms, supply list, and a conference scheduling page. The conference page will always have a Contact Me button available as I am always available to schedule a conference. However, during conference time I plan to use signup genius to set up conference times. I would also suggest sending home a paper copy to your non internet parents BEFORE sending the electronic invite. 

A great feature that Weebly has is it offers automatic mobile site creation. While you are building your website Weebly is working in the background to create a mobile site. This will be a huge benefit for students and parents who only have access by cell phone. 

This site also tracks daily visits. I am excited for the possibilities, yet anxious to find out if it is used by parents. I am hoping that by constantly updating it with pictures parents will check in to see their child. 

Do you have a class website? Are you a parent of a child with a class website? 

I would love to know your thoughts and ideas on this concept. 

I must credit Glitter Meets Glue with the beautiful graphics used on my site.