September
29, 2003
McDaniel
College
SLM:521(MC)
Instructor: Charles Phillips
Elective Assignment: Teacher Made Websites (Instruction)
The first site that I found was titled, “Mrs. Smith’s Third Grade Class Homepage.” This homepage was created by a teacher from Medlock Bridge Elementary, in Alpharetta, Georgia. Although the site does not specify, I assume that Mrs. Smith is like most elementary school teachers and teaches a variety of subjects. There are many positive aspects of this site. She has several features that are very helpful to her parents and students. Some of these features include “Newsletter” and “Calendar” where class and school events and information are posted. I also liked the “Student Work” link. I’m sure that her students are very excited to have their work posted on the internet to share with any of their friends and families that have internet access. Finally, Mrs. Smith obviously spent some time developing a “Webquest” activity for her students. This appears to be an excellent computer lab activity to help her students get more familiar with “surfing the net.” A recommendation that I would offer to her is to try to update more frequently. Many of her links were dated from the year 2000. From a design standpoint, I would tell her to change the color scheme of the page. The colors all appear very “babyish” or feminine because she uses a lot of light blue and pink. This might be a turn-off to the boys in her class. The last recommendation that I would suggest is to have a link to the school’s homepage. This would allow the students and parents to quickly jump back and forth between the two sites with greater ease. http://webtech.kennesaw.edu/ksmith/default.htm
The
second site that I visited is called, “Welcome To Mr. Johnson’s Fourth Grade
Class.” Mr. Johnson obviously teaches 4th
grade and his classroom is located at Gold Hill Elementary School, in Fort
Mill, South Carolina. He also teaches
all of the general subjects to his students.
Mr. Johnson’s homepage is current with up-to-date information that is
useful to his students. I tried
clicking on “Classroom News” and I was taken to an update that was dated
September 2003. I was also impressed
with his “4th Grade Websites” link.
There were at least 30 website links that were divided into the
different subject areas. These helpful
links appeared to directly relate to his curriculum. Mr. Johnson’s “All About Me” link was very informative. I’m sure that the parents and students
enjoyed reading some background information about their teacher. This might ease some nerves for the students
before they get to meet their new teacher.
I would suggest to Mr. Johnson that he needs to put more effort into the
aesthetics of his site. The plain black
text on top of a white background makes it look like just another Word
document. In addition to the lack of
color and creative fonts, Mr. Johnson should add some graphics to the
page. Clip art as well as student/classroom
photographs, would greatly improve the looks of this site. Most importantly, a link for student work
would greatly increase the number of visitors to this page. Just as student work bulletin boards are
popular in our classrooms, I would expect it to be a favorite on the
website. http://www.fort-mill.k12.sc.us/GHES/johnsonm/