Before the internet, teachers communicated with students with handouts in the classroom. Some teachers created weekly or monthly newsletters to send home to parents to let them know what was going on in the classroom, what topics were being covered, or what events were coming up.
But even before the internet, there simply were not enough hours in the day for teachers to create their own materials. Teachers have papers to grade, meetings to attend, lesson plans to write, tests to administer, a classroom to maintain, parents to conference with… and somewhere in there, actual students to teach.
And now, with the internet, teachers need to communicate with parents more frequently. Notifying parents about grades, activities, homework, or projects that their children are working on is required now by most school districts.
Fortunately, through a website or blog, teachers can post updates and information that parents and students need to succeed in their classes. Many school districts have web sites and each teacher is given their own page for communicating with parents and students.
However, teachers can also have their own web sites. In this assignment, you will examine key issues in classroom web sites, and will evaluate several tools that help to create web sites easily and efficiently.
After completing this assignment, you will be able to:
identify key characteristics of Web 2.0 software
critique and compare Web 2.0 tools
discuss privacy issues in public educator web sites
From the following list, choose two (2) website builders to compare
Google Sites
Using the evaluation form below, evaluate Weebly and Google Sites using the listed criteria. If you choose to use a site like Edublog or another web site creator, you can use that instead of Weebly or Google Sites for comparison.
This is a good skill for evaluating tool and technology that you will use for your students. For Extra credit, attach this evaluation form (+5 EC).