Blog 7

 Example Teaching website.

The website I visited was an 11th-grade English teacher Mrs. Barefoot. Mrs. Barefoot teaches at a high school in Mcmurray, Washington County, Pennsylvania. I found it to be a very helpful and easy to follow site.

https://barefootk.weebly.com/academic-english-11.html

Looking at the site, it is built and hosted by a web hosting service Weebly, the contact page gives a large amount of information to students primarily Mrs. Barefoots' email and web page but also the classes, location, and subject for the semester. 

Students can quickly confirm they are looking at the correct class information from this contact page.  The other tabs are specific to class and MLA layouts required during the classes. Mrs. Barefoot appears to teach 11th grade English and 10th grade Honors. The contact suggests she also teaches Theatre Arts but there is not a matching tab for details on that class. 

Both the English and the Honors have links that will automatically either bring up email  ( barefoot@pt-sd.org) or take the student to the Peter school district class site - Clever, where a subsequent login is needed for classwork ).

While the classwork probably requires student login information,  the other items under English, Honors, and MLA are open to the public and include information on the syllabus, study guides, and helpful related downloads.

Under some topics, such as English, the Movie, and the novel Fences Mrs. Barefoot gives helpful spreadsheet downloads to assist the student while they are watching and reading to understand the characters in the story.

I believe that Mrs. Barefoots’ usage and format are highly effective, not only does it keep the students aware of the study materials, it also gives them several avenues of contacting her should they have any concerns or questions. 

In some cases much of the required study material is available directly on the website, thus reducing the students’ need to search for material to complete the assignments. These techniques work well under the current school-wide issue where students and teachers can’t get into the physical classroom but also in normal school life.

Using technology:

When using technology it has to be easy for the user to navigate around, the information and steps need to be easy to follow and must aid the student in the endeavors and learning process. 

A simple website builder much like Weebly where a teacher can divide the subjects by tabs and sections will help guide the student. 

A must is the contact page, if there are any questions or the student has trouble following the work it is imperative they have an easy way to reach out to the teacher, so automatic links to email are a must.

Students are not all equally proficient so avoiding the use of any complex web tools would be a good idea, simple PDF downloads with assignments and spreadsheets of work and tips are a good approach. 

Perhaps some links to other sites, youtube demonstrating specific details, or sites with more details on historical elements may help create a broader image of the subject you are trying to teach. 

Using a Wiki Platform.

 

It was my first experience of PB Works, I struggled to develop the site using it. I found I had to spend a lot of time looking for tutorials on youtube as the functionality was not very intuitive or user friendly. I would have liked to have seen a message system where we as a group could have been aware of each other working on the site, perhaps there is but I never found it. I was able to navigate around the site after watching multiple tutorials, so more practice may make me a better user.  It does appear to be a great site for posting information and does produce a pretty good-looking page at the end. I think I would likely use it to design web pages if I had more time to learn about its techniques. I think it could be a strong tool for developing wikis for teaching k-12 students, I am just a novice user.