Draft

Communication & Accountability

Michael Perry

National Board Certified Business Teacher East Paulding High School

Adjunct Business Professor, Kennesaw State University

Why a Website and other tools for Communication with your clients

www.pdragons.com

WWW.Pdragons.Com

• Teacher Created Website– Post project sheets for

students/parents– Calendar of class

activities (online lesson plans) for students/parents

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WWW.Pdragons.Com

Main blackboard graphic with today’s assignment

• Announcements posted on main blackboard

• Daily quote to teach character education – Opening sponge activity

that trains students to use the site

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www.intheknowbio.com

• Intheknowbio.com is a site created by one of EPHS science teachers

• Good example of a quality teacher created website

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Email

• Email address posted on site

• Email is filtered to keep student/parent contact separate from University student contact and from personal mail

• Filters help file the correspondence as it is received

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Is it worth the effort to develop a site?

• It’s necessary in this era of accountability for teachers to have a classroom site, and to post their pages among those of the school or district site.

• The name of the school or district and its logo should appear on all pages to provide evidence of an official connection and a unifying element among all teachers’ sites at the school.

• While this is ideal – the question still remains especially if your district does not require it or will not really support it?

• YES! ! ! !

Patricia Deubel, PhD in computing technology in education

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District Support

• Sadly, when district sites, for whatever reason, do not include classroom teacher web pages, teachers often resort to other service providers—sometimes having to use their own funds to pay.

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Design Considerations

• Menus should be used that include links to plug-ins for viewing certain content, such as PDF and audio/video files.

• Make sure to alert users to any pop-ups being used on the site.

• Text should be presented on the middle 50-70 percent of the page in order to improve reading speed.

• Always avoid content that flashes, flickers, or blinks.

Patricia Deubel, PhD in computing technology in education

www.pdragons.com

Design Considerations Do’s and Don’ts

• Pages should display the date on which they were last updated and include contact information. It’s helpful to add a page URL at the bottom of pages for those who print out content to have a record of its source, but this feature is not as commonly found.

• Teachers should be wary of posting advertisements on their pages that are unsuitable for students, and not to link to any sites with inappropriate advertisements.

• Keep our students in mind at all times. Patricia Deubel, PhD in computing technology in education

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Design Specifics

• Avoid razzle-dazzle multimedia effects, as they really add nothing to learning and often detract from learners’ information processing capabilities.

• A site’s content must be accessible, easily navigated, easily read, and credibly written.

• Users should need only a few clicks to find information.

Patricia Deubel, PhD in computing technology in education

Draft

Methods for Teachers to get on the Web

Free or reasonably priced web hosting services geared for teachers

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Teacherweb.com

• Teacher Web, http://teacherweb.com/

• The fee for a TeacherWeb® site is $27 per year

• Icon driven, but they can be annoying to view

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School Notes.com

• School notes http://www.schoolnotes.com/

• Ad supported

• Good online documentation

• Several colleagues use this service

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Schoolrack.com

• Schoolrack.com, http://schoolrack.com/

• Recommended and widely used

• Easy to get a good professional design

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Inspiringteachers.com

• Inspiring Teachers -- http://www.inspiringteachers.com/community/webpages.html

• Offers free web pages for teachers. A membership includes 20MB of space, a free e-mail account, site-builder assistance, file management, and tools to promote the site.

www.pdragons.com

Quia.com

• Quia.com, www.quia.com • Same company for online quizzes• $49 per year for both quizzes and website• Create classes and track quiz results • Create class pages for communicating with

students • Maintain an online schedule and calendar • Upload images and audio clips • Copy and modify any of Quia's two million

activities to suit your own needs • Share your activities with students, friends,

colleagues, anyone in the world!

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Classhomework

• Classhomework.com

• What is ClassHomework?

• We offer a place for students to access their teacher's website, pick up their assignments and link to great homework help.

• Teachers build the site at http://www.teacherwebsite.com/