Where can a teacher make a classroom website?

I'm sure some of you will have suggestions for this. An elementary teacher contacted me for suggestions for where she can put up a classroom website. Apparently the school she works at doesn't have a school website! The first thing that came to my mind was Google Sites.

Do you think Google Sites would be good for this? Are there any other alternatives you can think of?

Tags: classroomwebsite

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Permalink Reply by Jessica (Barth) Steffel on July 20, 2008 at 9:20pm

I have used google sites for my 1st grade classroom site, and it works perfectly for an elementary site. It has a very clean elementary look, and you can easily add gadgets like a countdown or google calendar or photos to it. I have now switched to a wetpaint site because I can let parents upload photos from field trips, etc. and it includes a discussion forum.

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Permalink Reply by Heather Davis on July 21, 2008 at 2:30am

Hi, I use Teacher Web. www.teacherweb.com. Now, it is not a free site but it costs about $25 a year to join. I pay it myself. I have used this site for the past 5 years and it has grown tremendously and is much more user friendly then it used to be. It also has RSS feed which has been terrific especially now that I have added the blog to the site.

I teach Grade 4 but have also used it for Grade 2.

I have included my website link so you can have a look.

Heather

http://TeacherWeb.com/CH/YCISBEIJING/MsDavisYear5DL/

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Permalink Reply by Steve Maher on July 21, 2008 at 4:33am

Lunarpages offers free sites to K-12 educators. It may take a little lead time (two weeks), but you get a completely open site, complete with your own domain. All it takes is a formal letter of request from you school and a promise to put their logo (not distracting) on each page. No templates, no adsense, a completely open site. http://www.lunarpages.com/education/

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Permalink Reply by Anne Mirtschin on July 21, 2008 at 6:19am

Hello Dean Although we have an official school website, teachers at our school do not understand programming or coding. As many of us are now blogging and have class blogs, we have set up a school blog site at http://hawkesdale.globalstudent.org.au and if you look at the class links you can see each of the classes that have now set up blogs. We look upon them as websites and will be constantly adding to them and refining them as time progresses. We used globalstudent/teacher which is really edublogs as our interface. My own classes page is at http://murch.globalteacher.org.au if you are interested in seeing some of the pages that might be added. Otherwise, I do like google and google sites would be another option. However with a blogging interface it can be interactive with two way communications taking place between the class and parents, teachers, community and the world.

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Permalink Reply by Steve O'Connor on July 21, 2008 at 6:36am

One can get a free WordPress site from either

wordpress.com or edublogs.org.

I prefer the independent mode of using commercial webhosting. It gives you the ability to play with all kinds of software when you get to where you want to do so. You can get decent hosting for $5/mo. Most have quick and easy installers for a wide variety of software. You can explore virtually anything you want at a whim. Want a blog, install one. Try a wiki--go ahead. Discussion forum--a few clicks and you got it! Set up email accounts and more. No advertising or google collecting your personal information either. I can think of no better way to learn. It's easier than you think! You don't need to code anything--unless you want to get into that.

Steve

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Permalink Reply by Erik Dreisbach on July 21, 2008 at 7:03am

My class site is Google-based. I use Blogger as my main page, though the only blogging is my weekly homework assignments. For my needs, I find it better than Google Sites. I find it very easy to add items that I think my students will find interesting. I use Google docs for items that my students may need to download, and Google calender for key dates. I think of it as the "front page" for my class - where there's all the news that's fit to print. It's a bit crowded, but I hope that when my students use the site, they may stumble across other cool science sites - sites that I have previously hand-picked for them. I've also considered having one page for each grade I teach, but I think it's good for my students to see what other grades are exploring.
Here's a link to my site.
I also follow our school's guidelines as to posting pictures of our students. We have a list of students who may not appear in pictures by parent request (it's a very small list)
oh yeah, It's all free!