The Face of Your Classroom
Creating an Online Presence
How do students, parents, and community members see your classroom? Do you have an online component for communicating with parents?
Creating an online presence is simple when you think about framing it in four simple ways. Your classroom's appearance to the online world, or the Face of Your Classroom, is about teachers providing an online way for students and parents to access information about their classroom.
There are currently four core opportunities available for teachers to use. These four include:
1. Personalized homepages or start pages such as: Pageflakes, Netvibes, and Protopage·
Personalize homepages or start pages allow uses to quickly create a web presence using widgets provided by each company. They require no software, they are free and you are given a free sub domain name (URL) for your site.
2. Blogs (which is a contraction of the term "Web log") have a web site feel and are maintained with regular entries. Common Blogs for educators include: EduBlogs, 21Publish, Blogmeister, and Live Journal.
Blogs are also very simple but differ from the others. Think of a blog like a daily journal. They are designed for teachers to add information on a regular basis. Teachers use blogs to post daily assignments, student writings, podcasts or links to resources.
3. Classroom management systems like Blackboard, Moodle or Sakai.
Class management systems are really an extension of a classroom and the most robust of all the options. However, they are a secure environment that requires an ID and password to gain access. Teachers have the ability to post documents, videos and tests online. Most class management systems are purchased by a district and offered to their teachers.
4. Webpage Creators like Weebly. All have their advantages.
Webpage creators like Weebly are the easiest way for a teacher to have a website. Weebly offers the ability to easily upload text, images, documents and web links and a site may include multiple pages and even an imbedded blog. Weebly is free and we will focus on it for this segment.
