Olga LaPlante

These days we all need to share - at least that’s what the global community is about.

It’s important to be a contributor to the digital collection of knowledge - that’s how you become part of the community, which can be as small as your family, or as big as the entire world.

Here are some ways to share on the web:

Your bookmarks:

Del.icio.us

IKeepBookmarks

Portaportal

Blogs!

Your Calendar:

Localendar

Google Calendar

Your documents:

Writeboard

Google Apps

Zoho

Your photos:

Flickr

Shutterfly

Your videos:

YouTube

Sample videos: (or It’s not all nudity or obnoxious stuff!)

Did you know 2.0?

Nature Valley

TeacherTube

Blogs!

Your lessons:

Slideshare

Sample Slideshare.net slideshow: Little Book of Leadership 

Google Apps

Blogs!

And many more!

If you know good resources that you have been using, please add them as a comment to this post.

There is a discussion thread on ACTEM listserv happening right now about BESS and other kinds of filtering and whether districts give teachers bypassing rights. One of the comments was, yes we give bypassing rights to our teachers, and the only impact that was noted was that teachers could do their research at school instead of having to go home. And that made me think how schools are often a place where you can’t do things instead of a place that enables you to do more than you could before.

I tend to simplify things sometimes, or to overreact, and this might be one of those instances; however, something tells me that for schools to be successful they must become, or in some fortunate cases, remain the place where you can. A place where you CAN meet friends, where you CAN learn, where you CAN learn what you CAN do, where you CAN watch good movies and even videos on youtube with friends, and then you CAN blog about that on blogger.com, where you can receive emails, where you can do the things people do in the real world (appropriate things, of course).

So, here is my thought on a place where you CAN.

Why create a website? (Using iWeb)

Why a website?

Why build a website? Who is your audience? What is the purpose of your website?

Use the Why Build a Website handout to write down your thoughts and ideas.

10 Reasons to have a classroom website

After you have completed that work, please consider the following:

How will your website enhance classroom instruction? How can this website increase effectiveness and efficiency of personal communication? (Feel free to provide comments to this post with your reflections)

What is good web design?

We will be using iWeb - which is template-driven. However, it’s essential to have an idea of what a good website looks like to make better decisions about your layout and design overall. Even with a template there will be a certain leeway for you to be creative.

Use the handout to evaluate some of the websites.

Site 1

Site 2

Site 3

Site 4

Plan your website

Use a simple web to design the layout of your website. Plan on having a fairly wide structure (your navigation bar will have all or most of your pages on it).

Pages to include:

Home page - what content do you intend to put there? | Parent page | Assignments? | Student work? | About me? (and my course)

Create your website using iWeb

iWeb is a very user-friendly application. It does a lot of under-the-hood work for you - your can modify a lot of things, however, this is a template and some parts of it are not editable.

The Learning Center on your computer has a tutorial on iWeb. Take your time to go through it.

On the other hand, you can also get tutorials online.

iWeb ‘08 tutorial will not play while at school, will play from home.

iWeb ‘06 tutorial

Publishing options

Of course, the website has little use if it remains on your hard drive only.

You have some options when it comes to publishing it. One option is your personal webspace - if you have service with RoadRunner, you probably have some space on their server, so you may want to call up your ISP to check what’s going on.

Another option is local server in your school to which a lot of people have access - that rules out parent access, however.

Yet another option is coming up, at http://staff.portlandschools.org

The most convenient - and most expensive option - is having a .Mac account. Then you can publish right to the web without jumping through any hoops.

I am working with a teacher who is looking into helping ELL students learn to appreciate poetry. In some cases, it’s hard to find someone who would try to translate it - of course no free online translators are much good for this purpose.
Any ideas on how to help ELL students learn about poetry? (middle school, sometimes students have no reading and/or writing skills in their native language either).

These may be useful resources to help you move forward:

10 Ways to Use Blogs in the Classroom

Also, use the following document to figure out some stuff.

How to write a blog entry

And for fun, check out this Medieval Helpdesk Support in this movie!

Please review the following presentation and post your comments. Feel free to comment on things you disagree with - especially so, in fact!

To view the presentation, please contact me directly.