I've actually been anxious to test drive Google Sites and up until now have not taken the time. Google introduced Sites several months ago and I've been hopeful it would fill the bill for what I've been looking for for the past hand full of years.The need as I perceive: We've had campus websites for a least 10 years in MISD and on many of these sites we've had pages dedicated to the staff members on campus. In many cases our staff pages haven't been much more than a bio page and the teachers usually had little control over getting timely information posted to their page. So it hasn't been a truly affective way for our teachers to communicate with their kids or kids parents. I've felt we've needed a district supported method for creating a web site for ALL our teachers and then linking to these teachers sites from their campus site. The teachers would then be in complete control of the content on their site and could modify and update the information as they needed.
These teacher created websites could become the teachers jumping off place to any of the Web 2.0 resources the teacher chose to employed. Links to blogs, wikis, videos, Google Docs, VoiceThreads or anything appropriate for teaching and learning in their class. What I've been looking for is a starting place, a Home that could grow and evolve over time to become the teachers launching pad to all the richness of Web 2.0.
I realize that a number of teachers and departments have taken matters into their own hands and have created their own web presence and shared that info with their kids and parents. It's my opinion their efforts would be much more affective if their web site was linked to their campus site and we had ALL our teachers participated.
Our obstacles to achieving this goal:
- Lack of manpower to support 2500 teacher websites.
- Expense of hardware to support this many sites.
- Technical Support to keep this up and going.
- Complicated and expensive web mastering tools.
- Lack of user friendly tools that can be used on any computer from any location.
- Lack of funds to purchase third party hosting services.
One other feature of Sites that I want to make sure you're aware of is that you can invite others as contributors to your site. So it would be a cinch to create grade level sites or academic team sites where a group of teachers collaboratively build the content. I love it!
I think this may be the silver bullet I've been looking for!
No cost, easy to use and powerful.
The second Google tool I explored was Calendars. I had never used Google Calendars before but it was a cinch. I chose to explore this tool because I wanted to see if I could embed a Calendar into my Google Site. Snap that was easy! I love the way all these puzzle pieces fit together.Let me know your thoughts?
Am I on the right track?
Could we get our teachers on board?
What if we required every teacher to have a web presence?
2 comments:
The site you created is great! I think it could definitely be used for teacher websites. Using an option like Google sites takes care of at least some of the obstacles you mentioned in your post:
There is no hardware expense, no need to purchase (and learn) complicated webmastering software, no need to purchase third party hosting, and it provides easy to use tools that you can access from any computer.
Sounds like a great solution to me.
I know that many districts do require teachers to have a class web page, but I can see pros and cons to doing this. Some teachers will be better at updating and using their page than others, that's a given. I lean toward the idea that it is better to have no web site than one that is out of date or with no useful information on it. If websites are required, there will definitely be some of that going on.
Your site looks fantastic. I haven't "played" with sites either but it makes me want to go exploring now. We've struggled with our librarians wanting more out of their websites such as integrating the Web 2.0 tools. This does look like a great solution.
Post a Comment