Classroom Website Challenge Blog Post
by Tiffany Hall
What
did you create, and why?
I have
had a SWIFT page for 6-7 years and have progressively added and taken things
away as needed for the grade I teach or my school assignment. For the purpose
of this challenge I browsed the sites provided. Several new ideas cropped up
that I decided to add to my website. Classroom websites are very effective for
communicating with students and parents. If a parent has questions about
anything related to my classroom I can always refer them to the resources on my
website. If students forget or “lose” their reading log and spelling words they
can always find them on the website. My classroom computers are set to open right
to my webpage so when we are doing class activities we all begin in the same
place and have resources readily available to us.
This year
my grade level teaching partner and I decided to link both of our classroom
pages, as we departmentalize at our grade level; it was more effective for students,
parents, and ourselves to have everything in one location. Parents have really
appreciated this.
What went well for you?
It was great to be able
to get new ideas from the different websites I visited. I decided to add a page
about “rules and expectations”, “schedule”, and some different links for reading
and writing.
What was challenging?
I have been concerned
about the storage space allowed by the SWIFT page. My page is almost at
capacity and I’ve been thinking that I may need to use a different resource for
our blog. Mainly pictures take a lot of memory, but my kids enjoy seeing
pictures from our year so much that I don’t want to “skimp” on this page.
What did you enjoy?
I enjoyed taking a look
at different ideas and reflecting on the pages on my current website.
What ideas do you have
for using this tool with your students, grade level, staff or to communicate
with families?
My school is pretty
active in using SWIFT for classroom websites, but I will share the different
websites that I found effective, so that others may add to their pages as they
see fit.
Hi Tiffany! Your question about the amount of storage space is probably one other teachers may have. That's a problem that's easy to remedy! All one needs to do is contact a Camp Counselor or Instructional Technology Coordinator in the IMD and we'll bump up your storage space. Consider it done!
ReplyDeleteThanks Rose! I've really enjoyed the challenges so far!
ReplyDeleteYes we can bump up the storage, but you might also consider using and creating a KidBlog or Blogger for your Blog account or creating a Google Site that can be used for the special additions like photos. You can even give page level permissions on sites allowing certain people to edit pages, but not others. You can also set the privacy of who can view the site. If you choose to use another source for those purposes, you can always include the link on your SWIFT site to direct parents/students to the site. Just something to consider if do decide to explore some other options.
ReplyDelete