Week 3

This week I decided to use Weebly as the platform for my website.  There were several factors in this decision.  First, since Dr. Gibson will be using Weebly for her website, it allows for me to easily ask her questions and watch as her website changes.  Secondly, Wix does not easily change from one layout/format to another so if I decided I didn't like my website later, I would have to start over from scratch.  With Weebly, I can easily rearrange things and change the way it looks later.  That is great as I change classes and content each year.  Thirdly, I got on the Wix and Weebly editing pages and found that Weebly was pretty easy to use.

After choosing a platform, I completed the About and Contact Me pages.  I am not sold on if I like the background of my page, but I do find green a calming color.  I don't know if I should add more to my About page.  I don't know how much information I want out there about me, but the page looks rather blank.  Also I struggled with finding a picture of my alone.  So often I am the one taking the picture or I am with either my husband or baby in a picture.  I guess the one I have will do for now even though there is a large pool in the background.  I guess it emphasizes my hidden love for swimming.

Social bookmarking sites still remain to be a bit of a puzzle to me.  When I like a website, I just tend to favorite it on my browser and if I want to use it on another computer, just email the link to myself.  I guess that is a little archaic in these days when you can link it on a website and then access that website later.  Which one is more work?  That is undecided for now.  I guess an advantage of social bookmarking sites is the social part of it and being able to share your sites with others.  This would probably work really well in the world of education, but I am sure that most of my peers have never used these sites.

I really liked thinking about whether websites are good resources or not.  I have run across tons of sites that my kids will use as resources when they write papers that have zero credibility.  I am looking forward to teaching about how to evaluate a website the next time we do a research based writing project.  Kids are just notorious for searching on Google and using the first site that comes up and when I tell them they need to dig deeper, they just don't get it.

Week 2

This week creating a wireframe and a sitemap was some what challenging.  It is difficult to make decisions on what kind of pages you want on your website and really focusing on the information that needs to be out there for students and parents to be able to access.  I think this was much more challenging that I anticipated because I have been on maternity leave the last 8 weeks and haven't put much thought into what students and parents need to know lately.  The good thing about my first wireframe and sitemap is that I can always change them once I begin creating my web page.  As I transition back to being in the classroom, I think that I will be able to be more in tune to the needs of my audience. 

I looked at some of the websites that I thought were the best and the worst from last week and used them as models for my wireframe and sitemap.  I think it is important to not have an unnecessary frame on the left side of the page or have tons of links to other pages on your homepage.  You want your website to be streamlined and easy for people to read.  Reading the article Bottom - Up Design really helped me to think about what links I wanted at the top as categories and then what things fell into those categories to be in the drop down area.

While looking at various platforms for my website, I came to a few conclusions.  I definitely think Weebly has emerged as one of the easiest user friendly sites.  I think Wix can look really cool based on the ones that I have looked at.  I found the article Wix vs Weebly that helps breakdown the differences and similarities of the two. I have also seen really good sites done on WordPress and Edmodo.

I don't think I would use Wikispace because that is not really the aim of my website to allow people to contribute to the page.  I also think using a blog would limit some features that I would want to include such as a place for parents to access assignments, due dates, and syllabus in one location.  A blog would make people have to search for the entry where I included that information which would require searching different pages.  I am sure I will revisit the article above again and do a bit more research before I make a final decision about which platform to use.  

Question for the week: Reading over the document Using Word and DropBox for your site, it referenced a power point that I could not find.  Am I supposed to use Word to create my web page?

Week 1

This week I visited numerous science teacher websites to start getting ideas for my future website.  My district unfortunately promotes the use of a tool called ischool for their teacher websites.  This platform does not allow teachers to add creativity to their web page by adding color, background, or graphics.  This platform also does not have a calendar feature that is easily readable for students to see assignments and due dates.  This platform simply allows teachers to organize documents used in their classroom into unit folders.  Kind of boring in my opinion.

I visited the websites of some teachers that I work with that do not use ischool but have found other platforms for their websites.  I can't say that I was overly impressed with any of these teacher's web pages.  Most of them simply used calendar features to let students know about assignments, due dates, and possibly had hyperlinks to documents or power points.  There were a few sites that did have good external links to resource sites that would be beneficial to students who struggle with concepts.  Something that I need to remember to put on my site would be good links

The best websites I visited would be Messer's Science Class and Mrs. Mac's Classes .  Both teachers used weebly as their platform for their website which allowed them to change the background, have tabs, and include clip art.  Both websites caught my eye and more importantly were mostly up to date and easy to navigate.  These websites will be ones that I will reference again in the future as I begin to create my own website. I think weebly would be a viable option for a platform for my site.

After looking at all these websites I can easily seem some pitfalls that I need to avoid as I create my own site.  Looking at the article 10 Tips for an A+ Classroom Website, I think it is extremely important to review those tips as I create my site and make it user friendly. Looking at the list, those were all things that I was looking at when I was evaluating other teacher web pages.  Also I looked at the website World's Worst Website and found all the things to not include in my future website.  That page is a hilarious combination of everything you would never want your website to look like.