Ideas for a workshop on creating a teacher website?

My administrator has asked be to deliver a workshop on teacher websites. After thinking on the topic, given my allowed time (two hours or less) I believe it would be more effective to discuss why a teacher should create and maintain a site or what a site could do for them. I maintain an active site and regularly use it for instruction, but not everyone will use it the same way.

If you use a site, how do you use it? What is the benefit? What is the draw back? What platform do you use? What do you call it: classroom site, classroom companion site, a teacher website..? Do you have any thoughts? Please link to your site, I could use examples for all grade levels.

Tags: Teacher, Website

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Permalink Reply by Colleen Young on June 17, 2012 at 10:08am

I teach in the UK (age 11 to 18); at school we use Moodle so all departments can upload resources for their students to use.

Personally I use a blog (WordPress) to post homework details and messages for the classes that I teach - that means none of my students can say to me that they don't know what their homework is! I have several blogs - these are for sharing information with staff or students.

If I want an online space for a class to collaborate then I'd use a wiki - I have used Wikispaces. Students seem to feel more ownership with a wiki than Moodle and it's very easy to learn to use.

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Permalink Reply by maria silvia fernandez on June 18, 2012 at 7:45am

I regularly use a site ... well a blog with each of my levels. I use it to:

- post homework assignements and a summary of what we have done in class.

- I also include the video we watch every class and a kind of handout of grammar topics covered.

- Each time I need to include a poster in the class I also include it in the blog AND I use show it from there.

- The blog is always there as background on the screen.

- I included a section called "Extra practice" / "Review for xx test" where I post exercises to be done as homework or as a whole class activity where everybody looks at the screen and suggests the answer.

- I also include photos and the students´own porductions, such as videos or comic strips, etc.

These are some of my blogs

http://lingualhomeenglishinmind3.blogspot.com.ar/

http://meetmeinba.blogspot.com.ar/

http://lingualhomeuppo.blogspot.com.ar/

Last year we attempted using moodle at gnomio. For me the experience was kind of frustrating because students wouldn´t use it at all. It was a lot of time devoted to learning how to use it, creating material, etc. and they didn´t like it. May be because we don´t have one PC per student in our classrooms to work with it during class time and they saw it as something EXTRA or as more HOMWORK.

Marisil :)