Is a class wiki worth the time and efforts involved?
It's absolutely worth it! For teachers, seeing their work on the Web promotes pride in what they have accomplished. For students, the value in increased self-esteem is priceless.
We'll get a lot of compliments about the information and links we'll provide our students and staff.
Class site can showcase student achievements and projects; provide valuable Web links for students, teachers, and parents; and give an overview of the goals and curriculum of a course. The benefits of a class site are many, but the one that comes to mind first is that it is yet another way to get the message home. It's good public relations for the class, and it's a medium that appeals to students.
Exactly what should you plan to include on your site? There are a number of suggestions for site content. Possible features and topics can include the following:
Class theme, motto, and/or mascot
general information about the class and school
state and/or national curriculum standards
class and school board news
school rules and policies
announcements and events
activity and program pages
teacher biography and/or e-mail addresses
school calendar
in-class work and homework assignments
homework help
student projects
class schedules
links to curriculum-related information for teachers and students, search engines, parenting information, and education news and organizations
fun links
information about Internet use, safety policies .
When only starting out, the best advice for a new class site is to keep it small and manageable at first, when you become more comfortable with creating Web pages, you can begin to experiment and expand.
This week I also started to create my class site using Google Sites template - https://sites.google.com/site/victoriaillarionovasclass/home . Now I will spend every spare minute to fill it. Here are just a few goals that I have: to introduce new units, to provide information, to store important links that I want the students using, to share images with the students, for students to work as editors, adding content, for students to express their learning, for students, their parents and teacher collaboration.
Dear Victoria :
ReplyDeleteThanks for sharing the nice summary and your class wiki. I visited it and I think you have the right to feel proud.
I liked the parents' page best as it gives the chance to interact with the local community. Of course, this kind of communication needs the right awareness among parents.
Yours
Hanan
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