Website Building
A personal website is a great way for teachers to communicate with students, parents, and colleagues. A good website is a go-to source for frequently-used materials and handouts (rubrics, course expectations, review guides, assignment sheets). Teachers can also create an online homework board that's easy to update and easy for students to access when they're not in school or forget that all-important handout in their locker before leaving for the day.
Students can use websites for class projects and presentations or as portfolios of their work in their classes.
There are a number of good, easy-to-use and free-of-charge website building tools out there. Most of them require no experience or programming knowledge. Two of my current favorites are Weebly and Google Sites.
Planning Guide
Click here to open a LucidChart diagram to help you plan your website (You may be asked to create a LucidChart account or connect LucidChart to Google Drive). To use the diagram, click 'File-->Make a Copy' and rename your version. You can edit the text within the boxes and add, move, and remove boxes as needed. If you would prefer, you can download a printable PDF version of the chart.
RSD 13 Teacher Website Samples
A number of teachers at Strong and Coginchaug are making excellent use of their websites to communicate with students and parents and showcase student work. See a few examples below:
Mrs. Reddick (Strong School Latin)
Mrs. Reddick's homepage has all of her contact information. Roll over the 'Class of . . .' headings in the navigation bar to see some of the great work her students have produced. In addition, she has links to a number of important resources.
Mrs. McClintick (CRHS English)
Mrs. McClintick's website has her schedule, policies, English department reading lists, homework blogs and resources (including links and documents) for each of her classes.
Mrs. Schaefer (Strong School Art)
The Strong Art website has videos to demonstrate technique and lots of photos of student art work, as well as Mrs. Schaefer's embedded Twitter feed.
Mrs. Milardo (CRHS Math)
Built on WordPress, Mrs. Milardo's site has a running homework blog. Students can easily filter the homepage by clicking their class under 'Categories' in the top right. The 'blogroll' has links to important math resources.
Mr. Bajoros (CRHS Health)
The Coginchaug Health site has links to the health curriculum for all four years, all assignment resources and examples of student work--as well as a page for the new Coginchaug Ski Club. This site was also built with WordPress.