Creating Teacher Websites

Transcription

1 Creating Teacher Websites It s Easier Than You Think! Presenters Ryan Visser: visser@clemson.edu Pete Episcopo: pepiscopo@fullsail.com Resources for this presentation can be found at: In this 21 st century world in which we live, there are a lot of reasons why teachers should have websites just see the next page for what the research says! The trouble is that, oftentimes, teachers do not have the time or knowledge to create them. In this 3-hour workshop, we hope to provide you with the latter. There are a plethora of tools that you can use to create a website and we will be looking at a few of them. We ve arranged the tools into categories according to robustness and cost. Below, is the workshop schedule: Free Tools to Create completely free; all you need is to create an account. Webpages: Adobe Slate, Tackk Websites: Google Sites Freemium Tools free for limited number of pages (~3/5); afterwards, they cost $. Pages made with these tools look fantastic on mobile devices, too! Wix Squarespace Weebly Paid Tools These tools are more robust and provide you with much more control. Muse Dreamweaver Artificially Intelligent Tools emerging tools like The Grid will use Artificial Intelligence to design your websites. Although these tools are not ready for prime time, they are coming. See the video on The Grid.

2 Teacher Websites A Digital Hub For Your Classroom What The Research Says Student Engagement & Success Websites are available 24 hours a day and can be accessed in the time and place most convenient to students and parents, including after school or late at night (Witt, 2003). This access to information may reduce the need for students to contact the teacher and be more prepared, as well as reduce time the teacher has to spend in class asking questions (Witt, 2003). Teacher websites act as a virtual portal to the real classroom; supporting student learning by including course outlines, tutorial videos, or other supplementary materials (Holcomb, Castek, & Johnson, 2007). Students with learning disabilities (LD) and their parents may find extra benefits from classroom websites. Heiman and Shemesh (2003) found that students with LD logged into the website more frequently, entered the forum more often, and left significantly more messages in the discussion than the students without learning disabilities Witt (2003) reported that teacher websites may be perceived by students to be a contemporary methodology and an appealing instruction style, thus perceiving their teachers as more competent or credible. This may apply to parents perceptions of teachers as well. Teachers who develop classroom websites demonstrated a commitment to preparing students for participation in a growing technologically-literate world (Unal & Unal, 2010). Parental Involvement Student success increases with parental involvement, you know this. By having a website that communicates in part, to parents, information about class expectations, homework, grades, and upcoming events let parents feel connected to the classroom and their children. Mageau & DeBoor (2000) found that more than 60% of families wanted to be able to communicate online with teachers (p. 82). Researchers (Hill et al., 2010) proposed the inclusion of personal teacher information such as biographies, photo, hobbies and interests, and contact information. If this was included for parents they would have a better sense of who the teachers were, their qualifications, and how to contact them; and overall a better sense of security about their children s school experiences.

3 FREE TOOLS Adobe Tackk Tackk and Adobe Spark are two tools that tools which have emerged as popular options. They make it incredibly easy to create beautiful pages for everything in your life, whether it is personal, for school or for your small business. Each tool is available on the Web (desktop) and in app stores (mobile devices) and the finished result looks wonderful on all devices. Adobe Spark is a bundled set of tools with which you can make a webpage or even a narrated slideshow. Examples (created by Ryan Visser) Tackk: Spark Page (Nutrition): Spark Page (Planets): Take a look at the examples linked above. Based on the nice looking pages, would you guess that each took less than a half an hour? It s true, and very soon, you ll get a chance to try one out for yourself. If you would like to view tutorials on how to use these, here are a couple: Tackk Tutorial Spark Tutorial Tackk Challenge: 1. Go to Tackk.com and create an account. 2. Build a page that gives the reader a glimpse into your life (see the questions below), making sure to insert: Text Header Text Video Images (try the slideshow) Map Tackk 3. Answer some of the following questions: a. What s your name? b. What do you do? c. Where were you born? d. Where did you go to college? Why did you choose it? e. Where do you live?

4 FREE TOOLS (cont.) Adobe Spark Challenge: 1. Go to Adobe Spark and create an account. 2. Build a Spark Page that presents information about your school or home town. Use the following components: Text Header and Text Video Glideshow (with captions) Use Spark Video to create a brief, narrated video (3-4 images). Embed the video in your Spark Page. Adobe Spark Google Sites: Google Sites is a free website creation tool that allows you to create a full-blown website (as opposed to web-pages that Slate and Tackk creates). Whether you re using a standard Google account or a Google Education account, you can easily create a functional website for free. The best part about Google Sites is that you can easily integrate all other Google tools into the site: Google Calendar, Forms, Slides, etc. Google Sites has recently (Fall, 2016) been updated and in this workshop, we will be using this new version. Examples (created by Ryan Visser) Old Google Sites: New Google Sites: Tutorials Old Google Sites: New Google Sites: Creating a New Site 1. Go to and choose Create. 2. Make sure to create a site using the NEW Google Sites (as opposed to the Classic sites). 3. Name your site Use your name and something affiliated with your job (e.g., Ryan Visser s 8 th Grade Site; or, Mrs. Wrath s Fun Times with Math). You might need to change your name slightly if the name is not available (somebody else may have created a site with the name you originally chose). 4. Select a Theme of your choice. Home Page 1. Add a couple of sentences to introduce yourself and your site. 2. Inserting Content: Click on Insert (found on the right-hand panel) a. Add an image of you (or your school): InsertàImage b. Add a YouTube Video about something you are personally interested in: InsertàYouTube - you can search for a video, or if you want to play a specific video, you can enter the URL of the video. c. Lastly, insert a Map that shows the location of your school: InsertàGoogle EmbedsàMap

5 Create a Student Resources Page 1. Click on Pages (found on the right-hand panel) and click the add page icon 2. Name your page, Student Resources. 3. Add a line of text saying something like, On this page, students will have access to various resources (videos, forms, presentations, etc ) that they use in class. Adding Content to your Student page 1. Google Apps are easily inserted via the Insert panel. Examples include: a. Insert Google Calendar into your site by going to InsertàGoogle EmbedsàCalendar. b. Insert Google docs, slides and forms into your site by going to InsertàGoogle Docs Create another page of your choice (if time is available) 1. Create a new page of your choice what kind of page would you want? 2. Add some relevant information that you want your students or their parents to know. Publish Site For people to be able to see your site, you need to publish it by clicking on the blue Publish button at the top-right of your page. Moreover, whenever you make any changes to your site, you need to Publish it again. Editing your Navigation You have only a few options with your navigation, including renaming pages or hiding pages from the main navigation. To do this, go to the Pages panel and click on the vertical ellipsis (see image to right) to view various options. Further Information If you would like more information on embedding in the older version of Google Sites, please see the following video Ryan s Tutorials on how to embed Web 2.0 items in Google Sites Freemium Tools With Freemium tools such as the ones presented above, users can create a free account and can then try the tools for free. Typically, users can make 3-5 pages for free, but after that, there is a cost associated with creating more pages. Tools and Example Sites Wix: exampleà Ryan Visser s Site Squarespace: exampleà Pete Episcopo s Site Weebly: exampleà The Brown Bag Teacher

6 Paid Tools If you want more robustness and control of your Website, you will want to look into two of Adobe s web design tools: Muse and Dreamweaver. Dreamweaver has long been an industry standard and once you know how to use it, there s nothing that you can t do. The trouble is, the learning curve is fairly steep if you are a beginner to web design. Adobe Muse is a more recent tool that removes any prerequisite of coding knowledge, a great feature for those not accustomed to writing HTML or CSS. We have dedicated a small amount of time to explore Muse in this workshop, but do not have time to get into Dreamweaver. If you are interested in learning Dreamweaver, please see the Dropbox link that we referred to in the beginning of the workshop and at the beginning of this document. Tool Sites Adobe Muse Adobe Dreamweaver For all Adobe tools, we recommend Adobe TV Tutorials Futuristic Tool: The Grid The Grid is a next-generation web-creation tool. Below is the description from their site The Grid harnesses the power of artificial intelligence to take everything you throw at it - videos, images, text, urls and more - and automatically shape them into a custom website unique to you. As your needs grow, it evolves with you, effortlessly adapting to your needs. Want to add e-commerce? Social feeds? A different layout? The Grid just takes care of it. This is not a website builder. This is your personal AI web developer. If that description isn t too meaningful to you, check out their video: Unfortunately, The Grid s developers have not kept pace with demand we thought it would be ready for our workshop, but alas, it is not. Keep up with the news by checking out their Website.