Face of Your Classroom
Creating an online presence

This 'Face of Your Classroom' thing looks at a variety of resources which teachers can use to create a web presence for students and parents to access information about their classroom online.

We are focusing on four core resources available for teachers to use in creating a web presence for their classroom.

These four include: 
1. Personalized homepages or start pages such as Netvibes, and Protopage
2. Blogs (which is a contraction of the term "Web log") have a web site feel and are maintained with regular entries. One of the best Blogs for educators and one we reccomend is called: Edublogs. (Teachers from Macomb County only may obtain their Edublogs site from: http://edublogs.misd.net/.) Other blog sites available to educators include: Blogger, Blogmeister and Live Journal.
3. Online Classroom management systems like Blackboard, Moodle or Sakai.
4. Web site or page Creators like Weebly.

All have their advantages.

Personalized homepages, or start pages, allow users to quickly create a web presence using widgets provided by each company. They require no software, they are free and you are given a free sub domain name (URL) for your site.

Blogs are different from the others. Think of a blog as a daily journal. Blogs let teachers add information on a regular basis to a blog site. Teachers use blogs to post daily assignments, student writings, podcasts or links to resources.

Online classroom management systems can function as an extension of a classroom and are the most robust of all the options. An advantage is that they are a secure environment that requires an ID and password to gain access. Teachers have the ability to post documents, videos and tests online. Most class management systems are purchased by a district and offered to their teachers. 

Web Site/Page creators like Weebly, are the easiest way for a teacher to have a website. Weebly offers the ability to easily upload text, images, documents and web links. It provides a site that may include multiple pages and even an embedded blog. Weebly is free and we will focus on it for this activity.

Go to http://weebly.com and click on the "Try Demo".
Come back to this site and click on the Weebly image below to launch the video tutorial. While watching the tutorial, stop along the way and try each feature from the demo site.

21things Hands-On Activity and Assignment:

1. Create your own Weebly website.

2. Include at least three pages, text, images, documents and web-links. You may want to use your site as a means to demonstrate some of the things you have learned from this 21 Things course.

3. Include the URL to your site and a reflection about the ways you could use a web page creator to create a web presence.

4. Capture a screen shot of your page(s) to include in the portfolio.

Optional:  Create a web presence by completing steps 1-4 using another approved web "face".

Additional Resources:

Website created on Weebly about Weebly: http://www.weeblytutorial.com/index.html

Websites created using Weebly:
http://beginwithme.weebly.com/
http://www.wwpscurriculum.com/
http://www.infolibrarian.net/index.html
http://jharding.weebly.com/
http://techbootcamp.weebly.com/

Website created using Netvibes:
http://www.netvibes.com/fmiracola#Room_125

A Wiki is also a popular way to create an online presence.  However, many schools use Internet filtering software to block the use of wikis. 

21 Things for 21st Century Educators by CCRESA, IISD, MISD, SRESD is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at 21things.weebly.com.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://21things.weebly.com/.