Here are a couple of examples of websites created by preservice and practicing teachers. Spend some time taking a good look at these examples below to get some ideas of the kinds of things you might want to do with a website. Background

• Weblogs (blogs) kept by elementary aged students at Pt England School in New Zealand. Silas' blog is a favorite of mine because I had a chance to watch him work on it during a visit to New Zealand in February of 2010.
  
• An argument that every teacher needs a website these days. Published by Edutopia, the George Lucas Educational Foundation that has a clearly stated vision of how to integrate technology into classrooms. "Effective technology integration is achieved when its use supports curricular goals. It must support four key components of learning: active engagement, participation in groups, frequent interaction and feedback, and connection to real-world experts." Contributed by Becky Harmon.
• A thoughtful research-based discussion of how websites can be used to better connect families and the school. Published in a middle school technology journal edited by graduate students at North Carolina State Universtiy.  Contributed by Tammy Schrader.
  http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/win2003/involvement/6.html
  
• A first person account by one middle school English teacher who created his own website and has seen its use steadily and dramatically increase as it becomes an important resource for his students and student centered projects. Note that the author structured his site into three main areas: a place for the teacher to publish information, a place for students to publish final projects, and a place for class discussions. Contributed by Erin Roby.
  http://www.thejournal.com/articles/15805_1
  
• A succinct "how to" guide about building a classroom website written for teachers by a professor at Western Michigan University. Topics include what makes a quality teacher website (criteria) and how do I create a classroom website (step-by-step). This isn't a tutorial on web editing software, but instead a careful way to think through the structure and content of your site. Written for preservice teachers, it has content valuable to practicing teachers as well.
  http://www.wmich.edu/teachenglish/subpages/technology/classwebsite.htm
• Tim Lauer's Lewis Elementary School in Portland to see what a school website built as a weblog might look like. Elementary candidates, don't miss the individual teacher pages as you are thinking about creating your own site.
• A link to download a checklist published by the Grossmont Union High School District in La Mesa, CA for creating quality teacher websites. Though intended for high school teachers, preservice elementary teachers in our program have found this list helpful as well. Contributed by Becky Harmon.
  http://edtech.guhsd.net/dtabnk/tchrwebguidelines.pdf

Some Pacific students' teacher websites

• Downstairs in Berglund Hall the Early Learning Center (ELC) classes all maintain daily blogs where their teachers post captioned photos showing what the students learned today. http://fg.ed.pacificu.edu/elc/Site/Classroom_Blogs.html
• Machelle Childers class website for her 3rd grade two way immersion (TWI) classroom. Don't miss her student podcasts.
  http://web.me.com/mchilders/Site/Welcome.html
  
• Tammy Schrader's middle school mathematics page
  http://fg.ed.pacificu.edu/sweb/schrader/schradermath/Courses%20Front%20Page.html
• Tiffany Hedger's teacher website at Corbett Community School (HS) which she uses primarily as a communications tool through various media.
  http://corbett.k12.or.us/teacher-notes/ms-hedgers-notes/
  

• A number of students who previously took this class have posted their work in the projects page. Their final project for the course was creating an effective techer website for their student teaching placement (and beyond). The 2010 class (MS/HS) and the 2011 class all organized their sites by content area (e.g. Language Arts) and by grade level (ECE/Elem).
• Lindsay Lott's website blog that she used in her student teaching in the 5th grade--http://lindsaylott.edublogs.org/
  
• John Markealli used a teacher website blog with his middle school language arts students at Poynter Middle School  http://markealli.edublogs.org/
  
• Mrs. Baird's mathematics class--a blog
• Did you ever consider using Facebook as a home/school communication tool? Look up 8th Grade English with Mr. Knox (http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Puyallup-WA/8th-Grade-English-with-Mr-Knox/148196548557651) to see how a teacher in Puyallup does it.
  
• An educational alternative to using Facebook is Edmodo, a social networking site with educational purposes. 
• Here's a screen capture of a sample site that Natalie Getchell created for MS/HS science in Edmodo. You don't have access to her active page because this social networking tool is a closed space (she would have to enroll you in order to give you access) instead of open to the world. Many educators in the US prefer this.
• Link to an article about how one of the professors who joined us on the New Zealand trip used EdModo with elementary students in an international collaboration project that involved her student teachers.
• Link to an article about using EdModo in the classroom called Using EdModo in the Classroom: Five Days Later.
• Cherice Cochrane's teacher website that she is currently using (October 2011) in her student teaching in 2nd grade.

  
Assignment:
 
In class we will use a website editing tool to put together the first parts of a professional website. Come to class knowing 3-5 major headings you'd want to use for your website. We'll finish this first draft in class; some of you may choose to go on with this task and make it your final project.

Webpage authoring resources

• Google sites is the tool we are using to build a website in class.
• Mary Fran is a Google certified educator who maintains a site to help teachers get started with Google Sites. Our approach in class is typically to "show you enough to make you dangerous." Mary Fran shows walks you through a lot more. Special thanks to Tana Wakayama (Pacific MAT 2012) who shared this resource and used its tutorials to polish her teacher website as a future Japanese teacher.
• There are general online tutorials from Google to help you when you get stuck.
• Public domain open source webpage editor--N/VU
  http://www.nvu.com/
• Website basics--Download a  document that gives an overview of some of the website building skills discussed in class. 
• Download this document in .pdf format 
• A PDF reader like Preview (Apple) or Adobe Acrobat reader (either platform)--most computers have that software pre-installed)
• Download this document as an MS Word file.
• The best N/Vu tutorial is the User Guide found in the Help menu in the software itself. There is also a good (but rather detailed) tutorial at http://www.thesitewizard.com. I would recommend tutorial 2 about fonts, images, and adding text to your page. 
• A template I developed for teacher websites that you can edit with a website editor like N/Vu and others. This is a 5 page template that you can use to create your own teacher website.
• Some sample digital portfolio templates. I use these with our EDUC 625 class, but you could rework them into multiple page websites of your own that have nothing to do with being a portfolio.
• Michigan project called MITTEN (http://www.umd.umich.edu/mitten/eportfolios.htm)
• The WebQuest page templates--I suggest working with the generic student and teacher templates and reworking them for your own purposes.

Other webpage options

N/Vu is open source webpage editing software available to you and your students for free. That is why I recommend it. But there are other options to consider for making a teacher website:

• Use Tumblr. Ryan Hossner, Barbara Siemens, and Tana Wakayama all have experience with this tool, though more as a personal resource than a professional one. 
• Tumblr is a microblogging platform that allows users to post text, images, videos, links, quotes and audio to their tumblelog, a short-form blog (from Wikipedia--Tumblr). It looks to me like a sort of social networking blog with rich multimedia options like videos in an attractive presentation form that might be of great interest to your students. It seems less linear and more...tumbly? One notes that it is a commercial site, so one wonders when the ads might get turned on, but there are educational users.
• Ryan's tumblr feed for middle school science students. He uses it in concert with his website Mister Hossner's Neighborhood. In January of 2012, my favorite post in his tumblr feed was the BBC One video about devil rays and pelicans and a kind of symbiotic relationship between the two.
• Barbara's Student Resource Tumblr for a HS German class.
• Use a blog--a lot of teachers are not building websites at all, but instead are using blogs (weblogs) because they are easier to edit and can allow student interaction. They are great if you plan to post to your site daily. Here are a few links to get your thinking started:
• Teacher websites
• An 8th grade English class that uses individual blogs for student responses...
• Smith's 9th grade honors class
• Note that several of the Pacific students' teacher websites listed above are edublogs.
• Blogging software
• Edublogs from Australia has been recommended by Tim Lauer. There are four tutorials videos (about 3-5 minutes each) on this page that will get you started.  
• A recent article about this approach
• Will Richardson's teacher magazine article has a concise description of using blogs, wikis, and podcasts in the classroom with examples of teacher websites.
• The September L&L article "Online tools for sharing and collaborating" mentions the Protopage site that provides a free personal start page. There you can access one or more webpages tha allow you to post photos (classroom projects) and create text and links. This one I haven't tried, but on the strength of Julie Lindsay's recommendation in L&L you might want to try it for your teacher page even though it was designed more for social networking. You can control who sees the pages (rather like myspace)...that's about what I know about it.
• http://www.protopage.com/amandacase
  Amanda used Protopage to create the beginnings of her professional website for a language arts teacher. Do not miss the connection to Google maps under "fun stuff."
• http://www.protopage.com/mrbaker
  Brad used Protopage to create the beginnings of his professional website for a social studies teacher. It features some good initial links for an economics and American history class together with historical photos.
• Use proprietary web editing software like Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive.
  Many of Mark Bailey's students purchase (for under $100) GoLive and create their site with that softwarel. It is also available on the lab machines. With N/Vu I basically have you using a template. With GoLive it is easier to create you own design, and many find it easier to manage a website using this software. If a group of you are interested, I can schedule a tutorial for a small group to "make you dangerous" with GoLive. Also a number of Mark's students can be helpful in problem solving this program. Dreamweaver is another option. It is available on all Pacific University computer labs other than Carnegie. 
• If you have an Apple computer, consider using iWeb. iWeb is the new web editing tool in the iLife suite that makes terrific looking pages very easily. You will need to buy iLife (about $70) and do all your editing in this program.
• Example teacher websites edited in iLife
• Tammy Schrader's mathematics website
• Erin Roby's 8th grade science website

Options for hosting your final website

• Blogs are already hosted on the web. Edublogs is my favorite.
• Put it on the myweb.pacificu.edu server. This server is FTP accessible so you can update it from anywhere. But your files are limited in size, your space goes away once you are not a Pacific student, and there is a disclaimer stamped on every one of your pages
• Put it on the College of Education server by putting it in the Webdrop folder (inside the Student folder). Then email Mike and he'll post your work. We will host your site for at least 3 years after you graduate and there is no size limitation. But you have to come on campus to post your work.
• Ask if your district will host your website. If you show them something that improves home communication and supports student learning, they may find a way to do this. 
• If you have a home account (for DSL or a cable modem, for example) they have space on a server where your work could be hosted.
• If you are an Apple computer user, consider a .mac account (for less than $100 per year) as a way to host your work, get access to easy to use templates (like iWeb), and host a very professional looking site.