Classroom Websites

Using Websites Wisely was filled with tips and websites for teachers who are interested in using websites to accompany lessons. This article gave several websites and descriptions of the websites for teachers to consider using in their lessons. One point that the article mentioned was knowing what will benefit your lesson and anticipate any issues that might arise. I feel that these statements go hand in hand. First, teachers want to pick websites that are good as well as pertinent to the lesson; having students on a website that deals with three digit multiplication will not help students learning one digit multiplication. As far as anticipating any issues, I feel that this is something that teachers sometimes forget or over estimate their students’ abilities.

I am going to try to understand this article to the best of my ability as page one would not load on my screen. Making the Most of Your Classroom Website (from what I could read) based classroom websites on levels (1,2,3,4) Levels three and four were described as above and beyond websites that incorporated a mixture of resources and new literacies. One website I immediately think of is mrcoley.com. I feel that this website is frequently in the limelight about what a nice job Mr. Coley does to help his students outside of the classroom. I am anxious for class on Thursday to critique it and see if I can find another classroom website that is a level four.

Evaluating the Importance of Common Components in School-Based Websites: Frequency of Appearance and Stakeholders’ Judged Value did a very nice job of breaking down the components and thoughts that go into making a classroom website. It was a study based article that broke down its results into a chart that was easy to compare. It was interesting to see what information was included on some websites and not others. I also really liked that they included another chart to show the results of a survey giving to parents, students and teachers to see what each group felt was a necessary part of a classroom website.