Creative Classroom Online - In the Digital Classroom


Contents
	FEATURE: Kathy Schrock's Tech Quest

Creating class Web sites
by Kathy Schrock

Though it takes some time to create a class Web site and keep it updated, the benefits of doing so are endless. The latest statistics show that 72 percent of American homes have access to the Internet, so having a class Web site is the perfect way to encourage home-school communication, extend learning beyond the classroom, and show the world what your class is doing. Plus, with the easy-to-use templates that many hosting sites offer, you can create, post, and update a site in very little time -- without even knowing HTML, the computer language used to write Web pages!

Step 1: Get permission and guidelines
Before you start, check with your school about guidelines or templates for classroom Web sites. Some districts have regulations about whether or not you can post photos of students, what content is appropriate, and even what the layout should be. See samples of guidelines for school and classroom Web pages at Plano (Texas) Suggested Web Page Guidelines (http://k-12.pisd.edu/guide/schools/webpages/), Bellingham (Washington) Designing School Home Pages (http://www.bham.wednet.edu/homepage.htm). To obtain proper permissions for using student work, names, and pictures on your site, you may want to create a permission form for parents and students to sign. See the one used by the Bellingham Schools (http://www.bham.wednet.edu/copyrule.htm) for an example.

Step 2: Determine audience and purpose
Next, think about your site's main audience and reasons why people will visit it. For example, parents may log on to view samples of their children's work and send you e-mail messages. Students may depend on it to gather their daily homework assignments or visit educational sites relating to class studies. Community members may access it to learn about school events. If your site has the potential for multiple audiences, consider designing it with separate sections for each one.

Kathy Schrock, a school technology coordinator, created Kathy Schrock's Guide for Educators at

http://discoveryschool.com/schrockguide/