Teacher Websites – What Works, What Doesn’t, What To Do? ICE 2011 Poster Session – eGuide View History When I started at Evanston Township High School (ETHS), I was interested in carrying over a website that I had in my previous school (Roycemore School), and learned that MS Frontpage was the program offered for What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editing which fit my non-HTML knowledge base quite well. Within a few years, Moodle was offered at ETHS as a course management system, and I recall working on a project with a fellow teacher, yet could not get past some of the clunky behaviors of the popular open source option. During my final year of teaching, MS SharePoint was offered as an option. Within a short amount of time, the platform began to gain momentum as department Intranet sites were developed to house content and materials that were easily shared and made accessible to all interested teachers. it was during my first year as the Technology Integration Specialist that we deployed Google Apps to both our faculty and staff, and the addition of Google Sites offered our staff another option to create a fast and easy to maintain website. Data/Numbers One of our school website pages that I take the most pride in is the one that houses links to all of the teacher webpages organized by department. On this page, you’ll find over 100 links to classroom websites, and this is the page that many of our teachers and students alike visit in order to gain access to calendars, assignments, documents, and discussion boards. However, as with many websites both in and outside of the classroom, there’s more to a homepage than just having a static page and a link from a highly trafficked site. There’s content that needs to be managed, and upon closer look, I discovered that there’s a lot of variation in how this content is delivered, managed, and shared with students, parents, and the outside visitor. I decided to visit each of the 108 ETHS teacher websites to look for trends, patterns, and commonalities that can provide a framework for what works, what doesn’t, and what to do in terms of creating a classroom webpage.
What Works? Content Is King As anyone who writes for a blog or has read about search engine optimization can tell you, content is what drives traffic to a website, and a classroom webpage is no different. If students do not have a reason to visit a teacher’s webpage, then it doesn’t matter how well organized or how pretty it looks. For example, Mr. Wilburn’s SharePoint homepage screams content from the minute you visit with a “Quote of the Week” in the announcements and pictures from a recent health fair. Additional document libraries organized into individual units flood the top link bar, and relevant documents are also attached to messages in the announcements. Similarly, on Mr. Meier’s Google site, cleverly titled “Meiology”, we find clearly labeled tabs in the top link bar that feature important links or additional pages that either satisfy a student’s search or invites him or her to further explore a topic in Biology. Handouts and Documents Perhaps, one of the most requested features for a teacher website is the ability to store and share documents with students. Although teachers may still give paper copies to students during class, the need to make extras has diminished as teachers can refer students to their website. Likewise, parents looking for information on current activities or who want to learn along with their children can download and print documents from a teacher’s site.
Both SharePoint and Google Sites provide a solution, though they differ in their delivery. As we see in Ms. Parker’s website, the option to create Document Libraries, followed by subfolders for units, quarters, or another level of organization offers an easy and efficient
way to manage all the handouts that are relevant for the course. Another very useful feature that is exclusive to SharePoint is the ability to open your document library (or any sublevel) as a folder in Windows Explorer (Actions, Open in Windows Explorer) and then copy/paste or drag and drop items into this folder. For teachers with years of documents, this option saves time and preserves the organizational structure. It should be noted though, that this feature only plays nicely with Internet Explorer. The Google Sites option for document storage is a bit less robust, but as we find in Ms. Williamson’s class site under Assignments, there is the option to add attachments to any exisitng Web Page template or you can use a File Cabinet template to create a library similar to that found in SharePoint. Although some organization is possible with folders and reordering, the ability to upload multiple documents in one sitting is currently missing, so a teacher whose main objective in creating a website to store files may not be well served with a Google site. Calendars Students want to know what’s going on in a class, parents want to help their children plan ahead, and teachers enjoy planning units and lessons with the school calendar in mind. These three principles converge on a website calendar, and both platforms make a strong yet unique case for using each on a classroom website. As seen on Ms. Brady’s SharePoint class calendar for either math class, a student or parent can view assignments both in the past and for the current unit along with download available attachments. A class becomes increasingly transparent when a calendar is regularly maintained, and all parties seem to benefit as a result. One notable strength of MS SharePoint is its integration with MS Outlook, and this is seen when a teacher connects his or her class calendar to their Outlook program, thus having the ability to edit the SharePoint calendar directly from Outlook. This syncing feature makes the editing process more efficient for the teacher when creating multiple calendar items.
In Google Sites, the integration of Google Calendar and a classroom website makes for a very powerful combination. Ms. Ruocco uses this integration with her classes as she maintains a Google Calendar for each class and changes to the calendar are automatically published onto her website. Furthermore, since we have deployed Google Apps to our entire student body, each student can choose to copy specific events from Ms. Ruocco’s class calendar to his or her own Google Calendar, or they can subscribe to the entire class calendar so they will be able to see all of the events in one location. One can imagine the potential in having all classes maintain a Google Calendar and students then being able to organize their lives and their homework schedules all in one place. Homework Solutions
Students are increasingly asked to be responsible for their learning and differentiated instruction allows for more independent learning and checking for understanding to be done by students themselves. A large part of facilitating this relationship involves making homework solutions available to every student, and math teachers such as Ms. Gilroy using SharePoint and Mr. Jhunjhunwala using Google Sites regularly post answers to each days’ homework. As opposed to just obtaining the answers, students often see the steps used to reach the answer, and this is presumably shown in the same style and method as discussed during class. As any student who has flipped to the back of a math textbook can attest, this is far more valuable than just an answer in terms of learning the “how” and “why” of any problem.
Learning Centers
At ETHS, we are fortunate to have several learning centers (English/Writing Center, Math Lab, Science Study Center to name a few) to support our students, and several of these centers also maintain a website. Center supervisors often post useful links, the occasional tutorial if a need arises, or additional finds related to the course in question. Ms. Neil, on her Writing Center webpage, offers several tips and helpful hints on writing essays, discussing types of essays, and links to writing contests. Interaction Every student has a voice, but whether he or she uses it in the daily classroom experience varies widely. With an online discussion board, students are free to craft their responses, reply constructively to the posts of their peers, and engage in lively, thoughtful, and meaningful conversations, regardless of the day of the week or time of day. As seen in Ms. Delgado’s SharePoint discussion boards, students interact with each other in Spanish, and Ms. Delgado uses these conversations as teachable moments in class as she corrects grammar and vocabulary together with the class.
Links and Resources “Useful” Links are only really useful if students have a need and are motivated to explore. On sites such as Dr. Christiansen’s AP Biology SharePoint page, students are exposed to folders of links with whose contents include textbook resources, tips for studying for the AP test, and additional sites that focus on specific content areas or units of study. Another way of using a website is to document a special project or trip. In Ms. Marien’s Google class site, she and her co-teacher shared their experiences on a recent trip to Italy, complete with a running blog, photos, and the current weather report.
Transparency By posting everything about a class including agendas, lesson plans, handouts, labs and practice quizzes, a teacher can make his or her class as transparent as possible. Students and parents will always have a place to get caught up or relive the classroom experience through the online documentation. As seen in Ms. Slaton’s class sites, it all starts with a daily agenda and everything a student needs for class can be found and accessed on the site. Similarly, Mr. DeCraene makes his availability visible on his website and post updates on what students should be coming in for help during the week. With transparency through classroom webpages, the number of questions that a teacher fields from students and parents likely decreases, yet both sides gain from the amount of information shared.
What Doesn’t Work? Empty Site Syndrome When meeting with teachers creating a classroom website for the first time, I try to make sure that they leave feeling comfortable handling the workload for whatever goals they set for their page. However, with all the time and effort it takes to plan a class, let alone teach and grade student work, it is understandable that maintaining a website falls down the priority list as a result. What ends up happening is a blank site sits on the web, the “under construction” label is applied, and students have no reason to bookmark or access the page when there is no content available. Challenging Navigation For anyone who has done serious website design, neither SharePoint nor Google Sites can easily offer the type of robust features found on other sites. Furthermore, since neither is designed to be a course management system, both platforms allow for variation and customization so much that viewers can expect to find different parts of the website in different places for almost every teacher site in our directory. With navigation sidebars available on both platforms, teachers can design an easy to use and follow layout. However, as with any growing website, additional links and changes to web URLs often lead to dead links or dead ends which can quickly leave a negative impression on the end user. It’s the First Day, Every Day Even if the website is continuously updated and maintained, a student visitor will not notice this if the first thing on display is an outdated welcome message. Using the Announcements feature on the front page can pay off if new posts are written regularly. Alternatively, with the date/time stamp visible, if announcements are going to be used sparingly, a teacher is probably better off starting with a non-time sensitive welcome message or posting a year long syllabus for the course.
Hard to Use Before we started using Google Sites, I received some feedback that MS SharePoint was just too difficult to use for maintaining a website. To a certain extent, I agree with this. In our current version, it takes three clicks just to reach the WYSIWYG editor (under content editor web part) whereas a Google Site takes just one. If teachers don’t feel comfortable using the platform, it becomes too easy to give up on a fledgling website. Although Google Sites has its own learning curve, the preliminary feedback from teachers is that it has been easier to get started and maintain. What To Do? What’s In it For Me? One of the earliest lessons I learned when regarding teacher websites was that I became motivated to maintain a site if there was a strong enough reason for me to do so. My initial goal was to design a simple place to store resources and make them accessible to students. However, the ultimate goal was to organize my curriculum so that I could reflect on my teaching and continue to evaluate and improve on my practice from year to year. I recommend that teachers begin with a plan for their own website, and determine how they will benefit from the setup. As we see on Mr. Brady’s page, this first year Chemistry teacher has taken a few simple elements (daily agenda, handouts, calendar, expectations, and links) and has leveraged the embedding features of Google Apps to produce an organized, effective, and useful webpage. How Can I Realistically Keep It Up? Looking again at another new teacher’s website, Mr. Miner chose to focus his time and energy on documents and with a clear objective, he’s been able to keep his folders up to date with relevant and timely information. If teachers, who notoriously have much too much on their plates, commit to more than they can handle and set up a complicated webpage that they don’t update, they risk running out of steam and end up with a site that is perpetually “under construction.”
Can I Enjoy It Too? I’m not sure I would have been able to set up and maintain a class website if at least part of me did not have fun in the process. Today, with so many resources available online, teachers and students have much to share with one another. I envision future classroom websites operating more like Wikis where everyone has access to teach one another and share links to videos, demonstrations, and other useful resources. As we see in Ms. Heineman’s Math Google site, she has customized the look and feel of her site and uses a daily blog to communicate with her students the objectives, agendas, and homework attachments for her class. Can I Collaborate? One of the best ways to get a lot of content on a website is to find a partner or team of teachers to share in the workload. Not only is it possible to share more items, but teachers that collaborate on a website often find themselves working more efficiently and can learn from each other’s lessons. This has helped several teams in our building including our AP Psychology teachers. Although these three teachers have classrooms in different ends of the school, they all have access to edit a shared website. On this site (seen through screenshots due to access restrictions), we see a shared calendar, file cabinets for each unit, and individual pages where each teacher can edit for their own classes. (edible brains...PREZI) Can I Borrow? Instead of starting from scratch, teachers can choose to begin with a template on both SharePoint and on Google Sites. I often have mixed feelings when it comes to recommending the use of templates. On one hand, you have an instant site, and within seconds, you can edit the site, reconfigure the layout, and adjust content to match your objectives. On the other hand, if you’re unfamiliar with the nuts and bolts of the specific platform, editing a template can be just as hard if not more challenging than starting with a blank site. The upside to starting from scratch is that you learn how the website editor works and the more obstacles you overcome on your own, the greater the knowledge base you begin to accumulate.
Next Steps Determine Platform As stated above, we are currently offering teachers the choice of SharePoint or Google Sites when creating a new website. I believe we are fortunate to offer both options, but I also recognize the lack of cohesion that exists when you have multiple platforms. In schools where only one or possibly no option is supported, platform choice isn’t a concern, though it should be noted that many free options including Google Sites, Weebly, eduBlogs and WikiSpaces are fully supported and abundant on the web. Locate Templates if Available If your platform supports templates (and even if it doesn’t), I’d recommend finding a few sites that are examples of how you want your own website to look and feel. Take notes on various features and design elements as you begin to prioritize what’s important, what’s absolutely necessary, and what could be added in future years. Once you find a site or two, inquire about making a template out from the site. For SharePoint, ask a site administrator to make a copy of the site, and for Google, simply ask the owner to submit the site to the template gallery. Set Goals Once you have an idea of how you’re going to create your website, I’d recommend setting up a few goals and objectives for the site. For me, I wanted a place to organize my curriculum; I wanted to store links to useful websites so I wouldn’t lose them, but then I also wanted to share them with my students. I wanted the ability to post handouts distributed in class, so students would be able to access them from home if they were sick or if they lost a copy. Dr. Weiner uses his SharePoint site for a variety of purposes, but one of his main goals initially was to store and display his PowerPoint animations which he creates and then shares with our Science department and now with his classes. Other teachers such as Mr. Speight set up their navigation in advance and work towards making sure content is added to these areas.
Get Started Even if you don’t have your entire sitemap planned out from top to bottom, I recommend that you get started on your website, so you can begin seeing your ideas on screen. In Mr. Zhou’s, Mr. Freeland’s and Ms.Stone’s websites, you can tell that there are some elements that may not have been completely planned in advance or there exist some navigation oddities that could be adjusted. However, all three teachers had minimal training on how to use either Google Sites or SharePoint and went ahead and created a very functional and useful website for their students. The most important part is that they feel comfortable with the process and are not intimidated by maintaining a webpage.
Have Fun Lastly, I wanted to leave with a few website examples where teachers are clearly having fun and enjoy sharing with their classes. From a tweaked out SharePoint site (Mr. Schelbert, Mr. O’Shea - using SharePoint Designer) to a customized Wordpress blog (Ms. Sarmonpal), to an Mac.com site (Mr. Fodor) to a Blogger site (Mr. Kaiser), we find that the range of creativity, functionality, purpose and design all add to the individual expression that each teacher can display, yet all sites are common in that they benefit the classroom experience and aid the student in learning.