Website Reflections

Creating a website was not as intimidating as I imagined. While I maintained a homework site at my previous school, it was very basic and boring. After exploring other educational websites and their designs, I made a list of attributes I wanted in my own website. I knew I wanted two columns with the navigational bar along the left side. I also knew I wanted an easy, fun way for kids to interact online. I accomplished the interactivity through an online poll. Ideally, a new poll would be placed daily or weekly. Other important items I wanted to include were a calendar, links, something about learning units, tips for parents to help kids with their reading, and homework. While I believe a classroom website should be geared towards the students, I also find myself wanting to pull in the parents more and more. As a new parent, my ideas about the classroom are shifting and evolving. Thinking about what I would want to know about my own son's classroom, I'm beginning to see the classroom from a different perspective. Giving parents ways to be more involved and letting them feel a part of the classroom is more and more important to me.

I also wanted to include a blog. However, I found it difficult to incorporate a blog into the website using Microsoft Publisher. While finding a way to embed code for the poll was easy, it seemed as though a blog would be much more difficult. I searched for easy solutions online, but did not find any that suited my needs. This is definitely something I would like to further explore and integrate for a future website. In my mind, the students would be given the opportunity to update the blog with goings-on in the classroom. A way to recap the day. Eventually the blog would morph into a more interactive site, but to start, I would want the kids to take ownership and let them inform the parents about what they're doing.

Another issue for me was how to publish my site. Since I do not belong to a school right now, and I created the site based on my days at Parish, I was reticent to put the site out into the public when I was not an actual Parish employee. My ever-cautious lawyer husband discouraged me from hosting a site for the world to see. In the end, I used a Pack and Go option to submit my site to Dr. Smolka. This feature allowed me to send my site to another computer so that the program could open up on another computer. Once opened, then one could view the site as a webpage. While this was not an ideal way to share my site, it was a solution to the problem.

Overall, I learned a lot about web design and creation. While I am no expert, I feel much more confident now. Should a friend ask for help, I feel as though I could.