Exciting News!! I created my very first web page today. I titled it Miss B's Panther Place--the panther is Morton's mascott. I designed the page as an information portal for parents and student to inform themselves about what the students are learning in class, upcoming events and activities, assigned homework, and an optional location for communication. I am very happy with my finished product and I am even considering using this as one of my choice products--which takes a little stress off my workload. I was pleasantly surprised to see how user-friendly webs.com was (they even included a how-to video for the tech newbies). If anyone is interested in making a web page for your classroom next year, I strongly recommend this site. Heather introduced me to it and I am sooooo happy she did---thanks, Heather :).
I also worked on my prezi assignment some more tonight. I feel like I am getting much more comfortable with the different tools and how to manipulate them. It was a bit frustrating in class today trying to get used to them, but after awhile it definitely gets easier. I definitely see myself using prezi all the time next year and I am positive my students are going to go wild about it!! I think I might make prezi for one of my chocie projects, but try to challenge myself by creating links and possibly embedding a video--I'll definitely need a tutorial of how to do that though...if anyone knows how, I'd love some advice.
Thats all for tonight. If you get a chance, check out Miss B' Panther Place and give me any suggestions or feedback you have---please!!!
This is the personal record of my CADRE experience and the adventures I take throughout my journey of becoming a techy savvy teacher.
Casey,
ReplyDeleteI love your website!! It will be a great tool for your parents to stay caught up with what is happening in your classroom. I have a couple of suggestions based on my experience with a classroom webpage:
1. Put a counter on each page so that you can track how many people visit. I didn't do this at first and couldn't tell how many people were using the website. Once I did, I could see that there were pages that weren't visited and I could eliminate them and incorporate what was there on other pages. (This saved me time on the updating process.)
Putting a counter on will also tell you if anyone is visiting your site. Mine wasn't getting any hits for a long time and I was a little frustrated. And that leads to the next tip.
2. Get your students involved in some aspect of the page. One of the things that I did was to have kids take turns being the class photographer and including the photos on the website. Every now and then when there was a few minutes of downtime, I'd pull up the website and let them laugh and groan at the photos. Then they would inevitably go home and show their parents...and if they didn't, parents would be frequent visitors once they found out they might see pictures of their kids. Photos are a strong draw.
Excellent start! I wish you the best of luck with your webpage!
Kelly
p.s. The word Calendar in your tabs is misspelled...I only know this because I could never spell it and still whenever I see it I have to ask myself if it's right or wrong!
Thanks, Kelly for all the wonderful advice!!
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