Blog Post 7: Teacher Websites, Wikis, and Technology Use in My Future

    While I was at school, a lot of teachers had websites that could be accessed from the school website. Most of the time they were Weebly websites and other times they were just webpages on the school website itself, but regardless of where they were made, not many teachers used them. Some of them would bring it up on the first day of school or put the link on the syllabus, and never actually use the website. Others would put important files in there and keep it semi-updated, only really bringing it up for students that may have missed school for a long time. For my high school, all of the teacher websites were webpages of the main school website and could be accessed by clicking the "Department" tabs on the navigation bar. This was pretty helpful because everything was found in one place. It also looked good because everything followed the theme of the school website with the school colors and the layout stayed consistent for all teacher webpages. With the exception of some teachers who had independent websites one could be redirected to, there is public access on the webpages to class files, class calendars, and a biography of the teacher. I went to my old Pre-calculus teacher's webpage and it looked almost the same as when I took his class. The main difference, which I noticed in other webpages too, is that they added new distance learning tabs for resources. One problem about this is that most tabs are named "Distance Learning--Spring 2020", which is outdated but still contains pretty useful links to the programs teachers use to teach remotely anyways. Other teachers had empty webpages, or just had the biography tab filled in. One other challenging aspect of school websites, in general, is how difficult they are to reach. Most school websites are redirected pages from the county website, so you either have to all of the components of the URL of the school website, go to the county schools website, or do a very detailed google search. Especially when it comes to school names because there are many schools with the same name. For instance, when I search "Lincoln High School" on Google, it shows results for a Lincoln High School located in Texas, as opposed to the one I went to. So in order for me to get the website for my high school, I had to search the school name and the county. Here is a screenshot of the "Departments" webpage of the Lincoln High Website where you can access all the teacher websites (https://www.leonschools.net/domain/89):

    This week I have been able to see a lot of cool online tools that teachers use to manage their classrooms. One I would use in my future classroom is Seesaw, which is a digital program that teachers, students, and parents can use to share work on. Students can post assignments or do activities on different media, and the teacher can collaborate with them and show feedback. This logs everything online and is also accessible to other teachers and parents. Students and teachers can also create digital portfolios on Seesaw which they can share with each other and provide feedback or resources. I would also put review videos on my website for students, and a good website I saw on some teacher blogs for this is Edpuzzle. On Edpuzzle you can easily create and edit videos, compile videos from other websites, and create online lessons to have everything in one place for students. 

    Using PBworks to make our Wikis was not too bad. I had no experience creating a wiki before, so I had no idea how to use the program. The website looked really old, but it was pretty simple and easy to navigate once you understood what and where everything was. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense, although I had no experience with wikis, I compared it to Wikipedia, which was not very high-tech or modern looking, so PB Works being simple was fitting for an online encyclopedia. This is a good feature too though because they can provide simple ways to get information online. I would use it in my future classroom as a way for students to get an introduction to certain topics or for supplementary information they can easily click to and read and get a basic understanding of. Wikis can also help with research, sometimes someone just needs to cite something or get a refresher on a topic they've learned before, as opposed to doing an online activity.