Teacher Made Web Sites
I was disappointed with the number of teacher made web sites for high school courses. Most of the ones I found were teacher pages on school web sites and just had course descriptions, schedules, homework assignments, and the like.
So I chose two pages made by elementary school teachers for this assignment. The first of these was a kindergarten page created by Miss Terry Maddox at Kula Elementary School in Maui, Hawaii http://www.k12.hi.us/~tmaddox/. I enjoyed looking at this site. The home page had a picture of the current kindergarten class and was devoted to links of monthly pages which detailed the class activities for the month. I believe this page is useful to parents as it keeps them informed about activities the kindergarten class has completed for the month. Also included are lots of pictures of the children which parents like to see.
Commendations:
1. Colors used as backgrounds for each page were pastels and very appropriate to the kindergarten age and particular season. The pages were attractive to readers.
2. Parents love to see pictures of their children and there were many pictures on this site.
3. This was an easy to use site; the home page had one picture of all the class with links to each month. Each month had a description of the activities and links to pictures of those activities.
Recommendations:
1. Include more detail on the monthly pages about the classroom activities. As the year progressed, less detail appeared in writing. Although I am sure there was something planned every day, I wondered what they did all month based on only the sketchy description that was given.
2. The picture of the class is cut off on the home page and one must scroll down to see the entire picture. Perhaps the heading could be rearranged so the entire class picture was visible when the home page loaded.
3. I don’t like the idea of a “guestbook” where viewers can comment on the site, nor of links to awards Miss Maddox has won. Seems to me the teacher is “fishing for compliments”. Her e-mail address should be enough.
The second site I chose was Mr. Bacak’s second grade class website from H.D. Cook Elementary School in Washington, D.C. http://www.mrbacaksclass.com/. The second grade curriculum covers math, science, social studies, and language arts. I thought this website was useful to students more so than parents although parents would certainly want to take at least one look at it to become familiar with the teacher and the class schedule.
Commendations:
1. Home page was plain and simple, just a title and links. It was all viewable without scrolling. This makes it easy to use.
2. I like the links to educational games. This is an example of how the site is geared to students more than parents. Hopefully these sites reinforce concepts covered in the second grade.
3. Posting the schedule is great for parents so they have an idea of what their child’s day is like.
Recommendations
1. Use the same font on all pages. Some were serif and some sans serif of differing sizes. Some seemed geared for adults and some for students. One size would make it easier to read for both.
2. Include more topics and links for the students. The list of sentences and words they need to know is fine but rather dull by itself. Maybe worksheets where they could practice.
3. Include links back to the top of the page or the index from the bottom of each page. There is a considerable amount of scrolling required.