Month: March 2014

Weebly – A Classroom Website

weebly_logo

 

http://weebly4all.wordpress.com/2013/04/26/build-your-own-website-for-free/

Source: http://www.weebly.com/

What is Weebly? – And Why Have a Classroom Website?

Weebly is a website that allows you to create your own website. Weebly is free, but there are plans you can upgrade to for a fee (more on that below). Weebly allows you to create a website for your classroom – which is a great way to keep consistent communication with parents and students. On your website you can upload newsletters, photos of you classroom, student work, and students at work (make sure you have approval to put students images and/or work on your website). Your website can include a school calendar, reminders of field trips or other important news items, and include a way for parents to keep in contact with you through email and/or comments sections to updates. You can also include a short biography about yourself, including appropriate contact information. Further, you can include student-created blogs on your classroom website. These are only a few of the perks about having a classroom website.

Weebly Website Plan Options:

Free: This option is very basic, but allows you to have a classroom website. There are no privacy options, and your website will not be a traditional .com site. Your site will be, for example, mrpiesclassroom.weebly.com.

Basic: At this option you get everything from the free plan, plus you are able to remove the .weebly.com and add your own custom domain. You will need to buy this separately. You can do this at a website like GoDaddy.com. Domains typically cost $10-15 per year and you can buy them for multiple years. There is no privacy at this level. The cost for this plan is $49/year, but there are options at the six month and two year marks as well.

Pro: At this level you get everything from the free and basic levels, but now you can add password protected pages. The cost for this plan is $99 for one year, or $159 for two years. This is the plan that I would suggest for teachers due to the privacy you receive with it. If you work the website properly, you could even put multiple classes on the website if you teach more than one class. Each class can have a different password.

Educational Uses

Weebly, along with other classroom websites, allows you to easily create a customized website for your classroom. The website allows you to keep in contact with parents and students. If you take advantage of a service such as Remind101 that allows you to text parents for free, you can send out update texts informing them that the website has been updated. You can have students save their written work to a Word file, and then copy/paste their work onto the website as a student-created blog. Students can do this with their real names, or with a pen name. Some students may find motivation in seeing their personal writing in digital print, on a website – they have been published!

Standards/Assessment

A classroom website can primarily be used for communication to parents. That said, if you incorporate blogging into the website, any writing standard can be used. Writing standards such as perspective and opinionated writing are good options for blogging. Since the blogs will be student work, you can assess their work from the blog.

 Value

Upside: You can use a classroom website created on a site like Weebly to communicate with parents in many ways. Classroom newsletters, updates, school and classroom news, calendar dates, student blogs, images of students and their work (in accordance with school policy), and many other options help to make classroom websites a strong tool in education.

Downside: Weebly is free, but in order to get some of the desired aspects of a classroom website, it is going to cost you. This is true about most, if not all, personal website building sites. The usefulness, ease, and price will vary from site to site.

Conclusion 

A classroom website is becoming more essential as the years go by. You can create a classroom website for free on many sites, such as Weebly. To get some of the desired aspects of a classroom website, it is going to cost you. That said, if you properly utilize your classroom website, the cost will be worth it.

YouTube in the Classroom

images (1)Image Credit: http://sasafitness.hu/?attachment_id=2516

Source: www.youtube.com

What is YouTube? 

YouTube is a free website with millions of videos that cost you nothing to watch. The website is funded through advertisements which usually pop up before you watch videos. Sometimes you have the option to skip the advertisement after several seconds, but sometimes you have to watch the entire advertisement. You can find videos on YouTube on virtually any topic. To be safe, it is advisable to view any video you show in your classroom before sharing it with your class. There is also another similar website created for education called TeacherTube. Both websites have their benefits, but for the purpose of this article we will focus on YouTube. An important concept in YouTube are that there are channels. Each account owner has their own “channel” to post videos from. A YouTube channel is sort of like a profile.

TeacherTube Source: http://www.teachertube.com/

Educational Uses

18-YouTube-for-SchoolsHow can I use YouTube in my classroom? YouTube is a great resource because there are many educational channels on YouTube. Most of the channels are dedicated to a specific content area, such as math, science or language arts. For example, NASA has a YouTube channel. This channel is great for teaching a variety of science related standards. There are many channels that have old Bill Nye the Science Guy  videos. In addition to educational channels, there are many news related channels. YouTube is a great resource for bringing modern topics into the classroom. Students hear about various topics in the news; YouTube allows you to bring short news videos into your classroom to share with your students. You can connect modern news topics into the classroom by asking students to discuss their thoughts/opinions on topics. You can ask students to discuss the perspectives of the different sides of news. Then, you can have your students write about these perspectives, opinions and thoughts – all of those touch on standards in language arts. Depending on the news topic, it can touch on additional content area standards. Further, YouTube helps to teach in a diverse way, touching on various learning styles, and the content of YouTube can be multicultural. (Image Credit: http://www.ubergizmo.com/2011/12/youtube-for-schools/)

Standards & Assessment

As mentioned above, you can use YouTube to teach all content areas, and likely any standard. As mentioned above, YouTube can be used to teach perspective and opinion in writing (W.3.1). YouTube can be used to help learn and explain what nouns, verbs, etc., are (L.3.1.a).

There is no built-in assessment tool with YouTube, but you can develop lessons around what students see on YouTube. From there, you can create assessments.

Value

Upside: YouTube is a free source that teachers can use to teach virtually any content area and standard. YouTube can be used to teach modern-events/news and be used to help teach in a multicultural way. Students can see all around the world, and not have to leave their classroom to do this. This can help to open up the minds of students, teaching about places that they never imagined, or could not otherwise truly appreciate without seeing. You can also choose to only use a portion of a video, which can help to speed up the learning process as many videos are long, while others are very short.

Downside: There could be some copyright issues with YouTube, depending on the content being viewed, and various legislation that could go into law. Since YouTube is a free site that anyone can upload to, there is a lot of content that is not appropriate for the classroom. It is a smart idea to watch any video you plan to share with the class before sharing it. There are also advertisements on YouTube that may or may not be appropriate for students to view, so setting up the video beforehand is a good idea.

Conclusion 

YouTube is a great free website that can be utilized in the classroom. While there are some items to consider when deciding whether or not to use YouTube, and what video you choose to use, there is more upside than downside to the website. YouTube is a website that should be used in balance with other media options in the classroom. YouTube – the modern day educational video site.