What I hope to do is use my website to engage and educate my senior English students. So far, I have failed as few, if any, students visit my site.
If you have any tips, I'd gladly listen--my site is on the Robert Bateman Secondary Homepage under Staff and Staff websites (Bruce Fisher).
Sunday, October 28, 2007
Classroom website (English Language Arts)
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4 comments:
Hi Bruce,
If you take a lesson from FaceBook and a other Social Networking services that our students frequent, the reason they use them is that they are interactive. We grew up with the Read-Only web but our students only know the Read-Write web.
So, what components could we use to make your website essential for them to visit?
Have a look at Karl Wodtke's website: http://sd34.homeip.net/rhss/wodtke/start/
He is using Rapidweaver (for ease of use and rich media integration)
Because he is a science teacher, it works well to include simulations in the form of videos. As a Math Teacher Karl uses Keynote (PowerPoint would work as well) to create online demonstrations of concepts. For students who are not understanding well enough in class, he provides these services.
As an English teacher, you could provide an area that students could collaborate on writing projects such as peer editing (Wikis work best for this). As I am not a high school teacher I will open this up to others to add ideas to this post...
I would agree with Gary ... students need a "REASON" to visit a site - something social or connected. Pictures or anecdotes - hints or extra "tricks" ... places to comment with friends/classmates - places to find/request tutorials but most likely, just a "hook" - funny, personal, connected ... wikis or collaborative writing seem to be a good place to start - maybe a group write from a story start using google docs and then published to the website in a frame ..
I will look at Karl's website. I remember seeing his demonstration at last year's START finale, and I was impressed.
Thanks, Gary.
Thanks, James. I will look into Wikis for my website. I can make the interactive component a part of my T-LITE project, too.
Cheers,
Bruce
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