Creating webspaces for your courses
The first thing you should do is to consider what type of website or resources you would like to provide for the students in your course. If you need to provide regular updates then a mailing to their school email might work and if you wish to post assignments and presentations then you should consider creating a space for your course in Moodle.
Options and Ideas
Public folder on the school network. You may have the system administrator create a public folder for your class on the school network and then you can use it in a variety of ways: you may have it read only so that students may only copy files that you have put in the folder, you may let students place files in the folder so that they will be available for group work or the pooling of data.
Create a mailing list. Create a mailing list for your students using their school email accounts and then you can write one email with instructions and links to materials that each student in the school can access.
Course blog. You may create a blog, with comments turned off, for the posting of homework, the posting of links of resources, and to post interesting content. Examples of class blogs include: IB HL History Year One, Grade 12 English, and Global Geography. You may also create a wiki to provide another webspace or as a place to store content for your blog. Good blog providers would be blogger, wordpress, and edublogs.
Using a wiki. More to come.
Create a course space on the school Moodle site. Moodle is a course management system that you can use to create webpages for your course, place content and lessons, post materials, create online quizzes, in short anything that you might need to support your course. The address is kesmoodle.ca and Derek Parker can issue you a user name and a password. There are several staff members who have set up Moodle spaces and each would be happy to help you set up your space.
Here is a link to an earlier post regarding Moodle.
Problems and Possibilities with New Technologies
I stumbled across this BBC podcast only after I forgot to turn off the proceeding podcast for history, and realized that it dealt with a conversation from the morning in our staffroom. It is called "Cheating in Internet Age", 7 min., and the simple message is "if life [or technology] gives you lemons, make lemonade." Great lesson ideas regarding book reports and other common assignments or tasks that are plagiarized from the web.
This podcast, also from the BBC, reviews "Technology and Teaching" and reviews some of the current trends as well as uses for technology for teachers.
The final clip is from a school board in California (found while searching for a lost link to a similar podcast).
Here is a link to a cell phones and teaching post by W. Freyer on his blog. There is also a debate regarding cell phones in schools in the December/January 2001-8 issue of ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology.
Setting up a class blog
The instructions here are for blogger, but the basic principles will work with other free hosts such as wordpress and edublogs. The instructions will include registering with Google, then setting up a blog at blogger, managing comments, setting up an account with wikispaces, uploading content to wikispaces, and then writing posts that include links to content.
Sample blogs using this format include:
Academic English 12, http://www.academicenglish12.blogspot.com .
IB HL History http://ibhlhistorya207.blogspot.com/
Room A207 http://rooma207.blogspot.com/
PreCal and other pages at Mr. K's page
Steps to follow and remember to keep this set of instructions open to read as you work.
1. Register with Google and gmail.
2. Open an account with blogger, it is the same username and pasword as gmail. Follow the instructions and create a new blog. Do not close this window.
3. Open a new browser window and go to wikispaces and register for an account.
4. Once you have an account and create a page, then select the page and choose manage space (third option on left hand menu), in manage space select list and upload files from the Contents, then upload a file from your computer to this space. Right click on the blue file name in the list of files and copy the complete url or address as it appears in the little box that has appeared.
5. Go back to the window and blog that you created in #3 and in the posting section select create post. Write a comment, make sure the compose option is selected, and include the name of the file in the comment. Highlight the name of the file select the button at the top of the text box with the link and the earth and paste the address (url) of the file from wikispaces.
6. Select publish post.
7. Go to settings and select comments and turn off each comment option as you scroll down the page. Select save. If you wish to have comments make sure that you select the moderate comments option and have all comments first emailed to you.
8. Select view blog and see your work.
Rubrics Rubrics Rubrics
Here is a link the Rubistar site for teachers looking for online rubric creation site with templates, sample rubrics, and rubrics saved by other teachers. I have found the sample rubrics and templates to be the most useful as it can be difficult to sort through the very long list of rubrics posted by other teachers.
You may register as a user to save your rubrics on the site or you may copy the rubric that you create and paste it into a word document.
Teacher Web Pages
Wireless Keyboards
After a testing period, the school has purchased several new wireless keyboards for teachers to use with the projectors and interactive whiteboards.
The keyboards may be used to type class notes during class time by teachers who wish to write more clearly for their students, but who do not want to be restricted to previously prepared presentations. It seems that a dark blue background with white letters has provides good visibility while typing.
The keyboards may also be used to navigate through pages or presentations from anywhere in the class by teachers and students. Additionally, the students and teachers may use the keyboard to create content in real time with the interactive whiteboards. Content that may then be manipulated using the Smartboards.