post 6

Many teachers are required by their schools to keep class pages for the parents and students of their class. These pages can contain everything to information on grading policy and assignments to updates on upcoming events. I browsed around and found the page for Ms. Placek's 5th grade literacy class from Switlik Elementary school (website here). The page contained information to the parents about the teachers expectations for the students, such as getting their planner signed each night. It also had a section with key calendar dates to be recorded, like clothing drives and the upcoming book fair. She had multiple statements regarding school policy and a whole section with learning website links.
As a teacher, I will have my own website for students to easily access. If i teach english literature, I will include links to practice multiple choice questions regarding texts, videos that give time period and other background information on the books, and i will include an updated calendar of due dates that my students can access at any time. I would most likely chose a site like Edmodo that sends out notifications and can be accessed on mobile devices for the sake of convenience. I would like to use a sight that allows me to connect to the students and allows the students to instantly contact me through comments or messages directly on the sight. I also like thecae of students being able to turn things in electronically on the same page. Electronic submissions would make my job a lot easier because they can automatically be scanned through Grammarly to check spelling, grammar, and any hint of plagiarism, so all I would have left to do was to check content and assign a score. This would benefit me and the students because it would allow for me to grade things more quickly and have a shorter turn over time on assignments, it also hold the students accountable because nothing slips through the cracks.
Our most recent project has dealt with Web Resource evaluation. A web resource evaluation form is basically a rubric by which teachers can "grade" websites. The rubric creates a water mark for teachers to judge websites by so that they can determine what a good site is and what a good site is not. Web resource evaluations help internet users to be better stewards of the web, they can share their evaluations with certain sites to allow the author's opportunities to better their sites and make them more usable. I am sure there are many website authors out there who appreciate the feedback and the constructive criticism. These forms require teachers to do further thinking and put deeper consideration into what they present to their students from the internet. I like the effort these forms require from teachers, I like to think that they hold teachers to a higher standards. I think it would be nice if school administration generated these and required teachers to submit these before assigning sites to their students, but I think that the amount of work that requires of all involved parties makes it an unreasonable requirement. This assignment taught me how to evaluate and determine what makes a website good. The C-R-A-P system of evaluation came in handy when finishing off this project. In the future, I will be a better critic of the web and I will require a higher standard out of the sites I use.

Here is our evaluation form: