Teacher Websites

I am a big fan of teachers having websites and that is something that we (technology department) are working towards in our school district. Over the summer, we moved to a new website platform called DotNetNuke (www.dotnetnuke.com), which this is a free solution. With this web tool that users can be given permission to edit various pages that belong to them and it can all be done online from anywhere in the world. With this tool and others like this, it opens up a lot of doors for an non-technology savvy person to add content (assignments, files, handouts, etc) to a website without having to understand an HTML editor or even the need to purchase expensive software.

Anyways, lets get to the meat of this post. Here is the link for Ms. Kennedy's website for her 5th grade class at Bueker Middle School (http://teachers.emints.org/fy05/kennedyb/). I discovered this website via google and I jumped to Page 8 so I wouldn't (more than likely) repeat a page someone else does if they did a search as well.

With being a tech person, the thing on a website that jumps out a me is appearance. I do not like busy backgrounds and I can't stand it when people can't read the text due to the color being identical to the background if the person uses a picture and you can't read the text because the picture is too dominate. But with this site, the background isn't too horrible and the content on the page is very readable. I like how it has the school link and the district link at the top of the page so anyone can see what school and district they belong to and they are able to get to the organization's website. I like the Agenda menu at the top so you can pull up details about what was covered in class on a particular day. This is good for a parent to look at what was covered in class so yo can help your kid to succeed by helping with homework or go over the material to make sure they understand it.

She has a lot of content on this website. If you can think of it, it is probably there. She includes links for supplies needed, newsletters, classroom pictures (which has pictures of the classroom), class list (first names of students), calendar, and the list keeps going. It is very easy to navigate thru the site and to locate information.

One thing that was a little troubling, but in turn it may not be, is that she list students first names. I don't know if this is horrible or not but I do know it is better than listing their full names. My fear would be a person would come in and ask for a student by name at the classroom, which I understand that hopefully buildings are secure (doors locked) and visitors need to stop at the office before going anywhere else, and staff are required to wear ID's, but truly, how many schools are completely safe that they are secure, all staff wear proper ID's, and visitors can only stop in the office an no where else in the building? If you have a person come to the door asking for a student, would you question that person or if they look like they are official, would you release the student to them?

Overall, I don't really dislike most of what is on the site and my biggest thing is that it is readable and navigable. Those are two big things that is a MUST on any website. There is no point of a website if you can't read it or find information on this. It is great that she has an abundance of information and that it is updated regularly, which is another important point on the website. I really didn't find too much that I didn't like other than the background, but as I said above, the background isn't too bad because my focus stays on the page and it isn't super distracting.

Nicholas