PROJECT TITLE: Ms. Arashiro’s Class Website
URL: http://www.coryarashiro.webs.com
PROJECT DESCRIPTION:
What are you going to study?
My final project will take a look at the interaction between the teacher and parent through technology. I would like to create a website that will help achieve a classroom community at home and with in the school.
Why this particular project and technology?
I chose this particular project because now days many families are not active with their child. I want to get the parents and other family members more active and involved. So I chose to make a website for the classroom community. But I figured that it could be more then just teacher to parent but also parent-to-parent, student-to-student and so forth. Everyone within the classroom can be included. Also because I plan on teaching K-3rd grade I found that many of these youngsters misplace important papers and forget to tell their parents what’s happening but this way if a parent has a concern or wants to see what their child has been up to, they can just log on to the class website.
Where are you going to implement your project?
I plan on implementing my project with in the classroom that I teach and possibly suggesting it to all the teachers I may end up working with. Although I still have another year until I actually step into a classroom I found that I could use this also for my summer enrichment program that I run back at home. The concepts are similar where I would just like to increase communication between all parties.
Who are you participants?
My participants are the parents and the students.
What are the security and ethical considerations that you will need to address?
Some of the securities that I will need to address before anyone starts using the website is the importance of digital citizenship (How we can protect ourselves and our children from the inappropriate use of the internet, cyber bullying from each other and the consequences, and the proper use for the site). So for example if you look at the first homework that was assigned for the classroom it addresses the risk and how to use our class site for educational purposes. I use www.netsmartz.org. Video’s to help connect with the children so they have a little bit of an easier time comprehending the concept.
RATIONALE:
A) TPACK
T- I chose this technology because it’s easy to use and accessible from anywhere as long as you have a computer and the Internet. Also because in today’s society it is vital that you learn how to use a computer and save as much paper as possible.
P- The instructional strategies that I found useful for my website and classroom are, advance organizer- Statement of some inclusive concepts to introduce & sum up material; that follows. 1) Directs attention to important coming material.2) Highlights relationship among ideas to be presented. 3) Reminds leaner of relevant information already known (activates working memory). - Use this on the website through the news, and assignments & handouts.
Cognitive Apprenticeship- Relationship where less experienced learner acquires knowledge & skills under the guidance of an expert. - When the child gets help from the teacher at school as well when they are at home trying to access the website. The interaction between student and parent or their family.
Inductive Teaching- Given a specific challenge, students recognize need for facts, skills, & conceptual understanding, Teacher then provides instruction or helps students learn on their own. Includes: discovery, inquiry- problem- project-based learning, case-based teaching. -The classroom website allows this.
Experiential Learning- Learning is acquiring, applying knowledge, skills and feelings achieved through reflection upon everyday experience and is the way that most of us do our learning. - On the classroom website under assignments- the students must share with the parents what they learned in class and what they found most interesting about the class daily. (This is part of their daily journal. If the student is unable to get to a computer they can sit down with their parent and write it out together and turn in the very next day.)
Fostering a Community of Learners FCL- a system of interacting activities that results in a self-consciously active and reflective learning environment & uses a research, share, perform learning cycle. - Through the website the parents/students can communicate with each other and share their ideas of thoughts.
Metacognitive Strategy-Developing a plan of action; monitoring the plan; evaluating the plan. - As the teacher I have a plan for this website and its success. Over the year I will be monitoring it and then when it comes to an end I will be having the parents evaluate and give their input on what they think.
Scaffolding-Support for learning & problem solving. Includes: clues, reminders, encouragement, chunking, templates, or anything else that allows the student to grow in independence as a learner. - This involves the assignments and handouts as well as in class work.
CK- I chose the content that is in my website because I found those subjects the most frequently asked by parents and guardians. Also in the beginning of class I posted a question on my bog about what are something’s that you would like to know about your child? And these were the things that they said… what my child is doing while they are at school, their grades, presentations, etc. Also I found that creating a classroom website would make it easier for both parties to get info as well as receive it. If a parent has a question it could get answered by other parents and save the teacher time as well as the parent. Although the information on my website covers everything that teachers cover already I just wanted to make something that would be easy to access and easy to keep track of. All you have to know is your username and password and the website then the information is all there for you.
B) NETS*T
1. Engage in Professional Growth and Leadership- As the creator of the site as well as the teacher, I will have to responsible and constantly update the website as I say I will. Also I would have to monitor the things that are happening, between the students, parents, etc.
2. Promote and model digital citizenship and responsibility- as I stated above it would be my responsibility to check and maintain the site daily as well as monitoring the digital citizenship. Also in the beginning of the class before I release the site I would have to go over digital citizenship with the students as well as the parents and have both sign contracts that they understand the rules as well as the consequences. Also by allowing students to work with their parents on my classroom website it allows them to explore and grow on their own. For example providing them with the educational game websites.
3. Model digital age work and learning- having this website that is accessible by my peers, students and parents allows me to collaborate with them using digital tools and resources to support students success and innovation. Also because the website will be checked and worked on daily this allows the parents/students to effectively communicate with me. Either by using e-mail, blogs, postings or just the contact us or feedback forms on the website. And finally by having the parents help the students with their homework online and constantly being involved in their child’s studies, this should increase their knowledge on today’s growing technology.
4. Design and Develop Digital age learning experiences and assessments- through my reference page on my website this allows me to give proper respect to the sites that I borrow information from. Also as you can see under my assignments and handouts page I have a digital citizenship form that both the parents and students will sign after watching the video that addresses these concerns. Also students will learn in more depth about the proper usage during class. However once I start my class I would like to have a conference with all parents to teach and go over the website and its uses.
5. Facilitate and inspire students learning and creativity- If my website is a success I would like to enter one of those OTEN conferences as a presentation speaker. So I can share with other teachers my ideas. But to keep it closer to home I plan on sharing this with fellow colleagues and possibly speaking to the principal about putting on a workshop for our school. However I have already started to share this new knowledge of technology with my friends that are planning to become teachers as well at other universities such as University of Hawaii and Western Oregon University.
C) BACKGROUND RESEARCH- As for my background research I just have the question that I asked on my blog and my classmates input. Although I was one of the students in the class that used a different website other then PBWiki, Google docs and etc. For that I just had an idea of what I wanted to do when this assignment was first assigned and how I wanted my website to look and the content I wanted to have it contain. So when we went to the OTEN conference I knew what I wanted to learn about and I just looked for the presentations that related to my topic. From there I learned about digital citizenship and the sites that help teach and demonstrate that. Then on my own time I looked into free sites that had templates to help create websites. I looked at seamonkey.com but this site was very complicated and had many downloads that you had to install before you used it. This website is not recommended for first time website makers either. When using this website you have to have some sort of background computer knowledge. For example html codes and how to use them. Then the sites that we were already used to which are the Google and PBWiki but I wanted my websites homepage to be the main direct page and easy to use for the parents and students. So I came down to webs.com. This site allowed my website to look like its own domain as well as it being very easy to make. Everything on this website was self-explanatory. But the bad thing about this site is that you can’t get rid of the ads. Although after our presentations I would like to look into the new Google templates because I really like the way those look.
PROCEDURE:
What the website contains:
Home- There is an Introduction to the class, and a little biography about myself as well as a portrait of me.
News- Right now on the news section there is the first day of school announcement and how school went and also the deck the halls announcement that basically talks about the holidays and what to expect in weather, fun things that we will be doing in the classroom. Eventually as the school year goes on I would like to have important notices such as parent teacher conference, book sale, the newsletter from the school, excursions and any notes that I might have to the parents or the students. Hopefully once I start teaching I could use this to recap the day for the parents so they wont be clueless.
Calendar of Events- As of right now I just used the Forest Grove school district calendar. However as the year goes on I would like to put in important dates that just pertain to my classroom. For example, individual birthdays, days off, testing (standards), exams/quizzes, project due dates, excursions, fun days and show and tell.
Assignments & Handouts- Right now on this page there are four days that have been assigned homework. So basically I would have the child write in their planner what their homework is but I would also post everyday’s assignment on our classroom homepage. This way if parents have a question about a certain homework assignment they can make a post and I can respond to it or if other parents can help them the can make a post in response. Also this makes it easy for parents to connect with the links that I assign for online homework. They can simply just click on the assignment and it will take them to the page that their child must do, instead of having to type in the URL and search it pops right up.
Resources- this page allows parents to look at other websites that I recommend for their child to learn on. For example right now I have www.netsmartz.org, www.thatquiz.org, and www.sheppardssoftware.com. Also on this page it tells them what each site contains then the parents can go on those sites and explore.
Photo Gallery- I do not have any pictures up as of right now but for this page my plan would be to take pictures of the students while they are on excursions, fun days (ice cream making, around the world (ethnicity day)), show and tell and anything that I think the parents would like to see their child doing or would want to keep memories of them.
Members- For this page it’s just the followers of your site. So it would just be my class and their parents. They will each have their own accounts where they would make a biography about themselves and anyone in the class could go and see it. This allows interaction with each other outside of class as well as hopefully helping the parents to get to know each other and build relationships with other families so they could continue the classroom community outside of school.
Location & Directions- My plan for this page is to put the schools address and the link to the schools website. But also have my classroom information on there as well. Hopefully I would like to connect a slideshow of the classroom to the classroom information. That would basically be a virtual tour of my classroom. This allows for parents that were not able to come to parent teacher conference or the first day of school to experience what some of the other parents were able to.
About us- this page has the class roster in alphabetical order. My plan for this is that it would be secured and only teacher to individual student/family will have access to this page. The student would click on their name and then a password box would pop up and they would need to enter this. Once they do they will have access to their report cards/grades. This allows the parent to check up on the student without having to personally talk to the teacher all the time. This will show the students individual grade for all assignments, quizzes, exams, projects, participation as well as attendance and tardies. If the parent has any concerns or questions they can e-mail me or make a posting on their child’s page. However this is a work in progress but this is my goal for this page and I am pretty excited about it.
Forums- this is just where I post general discussion questions. Like one that I have up there is if any parents have any ideas for excursions. This allows me to get parents interaction with the class as well as allowing them to have input in their child’s education.
Contact us- this is just another easy way for a parent or guardian to get a question answered by me. After the parent/guardian asks me a question and feels out the form it will go directly to my inbox and I can address the question immediately.
Videos- this is where the videos on the website come together. Also where I can post podcast that the students create of I create. So If I assign a read-aloud on the site they simply go to this page. Or if we make videos in class and the parents want to see them I can upload them here. It’s a simple and easy way to share video files.
Feedback- any concerns the parents have about the website or their child can be sent to me through this form.
DATA COLLECTION: Some ways I will know if my project will be successful is from sending out a survey to my classmates as well as my peers and what they think about the website. Also eventually when I use it in a classroom environment. And next from my presentation in the classroom and the comments, concerns or questions that they may have.
Here are the responses that I got after my presentation from my classmates:
Mina- “Nice thinking to motivate parents staying on the same page. I loved how you added the useful and relevant videos for the children. The audio-visual way to engage children to their homework or other useful info that they should know is engaging and captivating. I too as a teacher think that this audiovisual interaction will stick longer in their head. Liked your project very much.”
Alyssa- “Great website thus far. Good content. I like the idea of linking grades. I like the blog on the page. I was hoping for something like that on mine. I’ll look at your site more and see if I have anything else to say.”
Kristin- “I really liked how well organized your site was and I really like how you site focuses on parent-student interaction. The resources you used were really interesting too! I hope you get really good use out of your website in the future.”
Emily- “Your website looks really neat. Great Job! I like that your site is private. It is cool that you can get messages through this site. I like your idea of the slideshow of your classroom and class news. You could really use this as another reminder of calendar events. Like days off. I can tell you have done a lot with this site.”
Lindsay- “Very cool looking site. I love all the nice links to websites- I will be sure to use netsmartzkids. Thanks for the great ideas. It will all really come together and be very relevant when you get a classroom of your own.”
Anonymous- “Great site and very useful for your parents, I like the look of webs and it is free (to bad it has ads.). What would you do for families without Internet? (I’m sure not to many?)
DATA ANALYSIS: The other tool that I used to collect data for my project was www.surveymonkey.com. From the survey I had three sections, user friendly, content, and overall review. In my user-friendly section I asked if they thought my website was easy to use and if they thought parents/students would have an easy time. All participants said yes. Some of the suggestions and comments that they gave were: “Looks like an easy template that offers lots of flexibility and room for future growth.” Another person added that I should “ Try and have ads that are educator friendly or see if they will remove them for educators.” After receiving this suggestion I found that they don’t remove the ads unless you are willing to pay then you can make that decision on your own. But what they did do for me was change the ads to have something to do with education. My next section was on the content. I asked if they found the content relevant and helpful? All said yes! I then proceeded to ask this question, as a teacher/parent what are some of the things that you liked about the site? Is there anything else that you think would be important or helpful to parents? These were the answers, “it's hard to say what you need to add. You’ll have to explore and ask parents when they use it”, “I like the news section and that there is an assignment section for families to keep track of to dos.” and “I like the look and easy use”. And the last section that I had in my survey was the overall review. So some left positive and negative feedback, but overall they enjoyed my site and thought that it was really good. Here is some of the feedback that I got… “Good template with lots of possibilities
Ads are a drag - depending on how much it costs it might be worth paying to have them taken out [but only if you really plan to use the site, be careful to keep things simple so that the site is easy to navigate”, “It looks great so far. My only question would be how you would monitor whether the students and their families are doing the activities assigned for home, and what about families that are unable to all sit down at one time together?” “Overall it is a great class site and I hope you are able to make it useful for your students and parents”, “how would you orient parents to this site? Would you just expect them to pick it up? Maybe you could teach your kids and they could show their parents?
Also is there a place where you share kids' work?” and “Keep adding to it and by the time you are a teacher in a classroom you will have a wonderful site”.
FINDINGS: While working on this website I learned a lot. Before entering this course I had no clue what the difference between a wiki and RSS was. I didn’t even know what those were to be honest. But while working on our projects we were faced with having to find all that out. For example, what type of website we wanted, did we want a wiki, or blog? Which one would be more beneficial and useful for the information that we wanted to share? Did we want to connect RSS feeds to our sites, etc? These were the questions that were constantly running through our heads. However after attending the OTEN conference and reading the Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms, as well listening to fellow classmates presentations I was able to narrow it down to what I exactly wanted for my website. Through my website I was able to add pages that I wanted to share and delete those that I found would not be useful. My site also allowed me to customize the privacy settings. For example, not anyone can see my site even if they plug in the domain. They have to have a log in and they have to be invited. This allows for my students privacy and protection. And to top it off it was really easy to do this. By just a click of the button and it was done. Next I found that using this website it was the most organized and user friendly for a kindergarten audience. The buttons were right there on the home page and the more advance things for the parents are on the sidebars. There wasn’t an overload of information for the parents and I kept it simple so there is no confusion.
After the presentations I learned that keeping your website simple but attractive to the eye at the same time was key. My fellow classmates enjoyed my website because it was so user friendly and organized. For the audience that I am trying to attract this is a good site to use cause it short and simple, straight to the point. Although I did find that the ads were distracting. If I chose to do use a different site to create my webpage I would have chosen Google because the new template attracted me and the fact of the easy user capabilities.
CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS:
In conclusion I felt that my website was a success. Everyone enjoyed the way it looked and the content that was provided. I understand that it is still a work in progress but constantly playing with the website and exploring others I think it will make it easier for me once I decide to implicate it into my classroom. I have many more ideas for the site and what I want it to be capable of doing but as many have already pointed out it will be difficult to succeed unless I provide my students and parents with the right amount of information needed to operate the site successfully. I also must look into the ads because as many have also informed me they are irritating and they have no relevance to my website, especially when teaching such a young class. Many have also opened my eyes to some obstacles such as the problem with families that don’t have enough time to sit down with their child as well as those that may not have access to a computer, or even the fact of monitoring the child’s computer activities and how I will be able to check to make sure the child has been doing the computer assignments on the assignment & handouts page. To answer the question about the child that has no access to the Internet I would provide a letter home in the beginning asking families if they had a computer and if they have one with Internet and if it would be easy for them to go on it daily. After I receive those back I might have to accommodate for some and stick to paper assignments but for those that responded yes and agreed to the terms, they could use the website. Also for monitoring the child’s activity that’s where the daily journal comes into play and maybe pop quizzes on the assignments the next day. There are still many other concerns that come up I’m sure but with an open mind I go into this project hoping for success.
PLAN OF ACTION: As the text has pointed out on pg. 85, “As evidenced by wikis, the biggest, most sweeping change in our relationship with the internet may not be as much the ability to publish as it is the ability to share and connect and create with many, many others of like minds and interests.” As the statement above points out it is not hard to share and put your information on the web but to share it with those is much more difficult. I did not find the process of creating the site hard but now the process of sharing it with my class a little difficult. Like I stated above in the other sections I don’t know how much background a family may have using a computer or even having a computer. How well will they be able to access and engage with my website. My site can only succeed if the people using the site understand and use the site to its full potential. At the same time because there are a lot of people out there I want to protect my students as well as their families and privacy settings can only go so far. So teaching my class about these risk and some key preventions will be key in the beginning of the year.
My next steps for this site are getting the parents and children to understand how to use it. And the purposes that I created it. Also sharing it with my friends that are also in the education scene so it can become a worldwide tool. Maybe if the site is a success I could use it to connect with other classrooms around the world to help share ideas and maybe even get my students pen pals in other countries. But mostly getting the parents to understand the purpose and how to use the site to benefit them as well as their child. Also my main goal now is to keep up with the website daily and be responsible to getting the information out to the students and parents on a timely matter. There are so many possibilities but so little time.
