An Internet Tour of Your School
Funny that we are reading this article. My school just implemented the virtual school tour on our website. This tool has provided future parents and new-teacher candidates valuable information about the district and school philosophy, mission statement, and campus information. My only concern with the tour, is that it won't load on my faculty computer! Kind of a big deal right? I can never download any new programs onto my teacher computer without my Technology administrator's permission. She has to accept the download, because I do not have administrator priviledges. Currently, the tour requires a more current form of Window's Media Player that is not installed on our computers. I have never viewed the virtual tour, but apparently it is a big hit!
Seymour Papert on Project-Based Learning
Professor Paper, a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence and a professor at MIT, is a huge advicate on project-based learning. He suggested throwing out curriculum maps and standards, because we are segregating the child based on age and grade. Learning needs to be done based on common student interest. Although I partially agree with this learning concept, I also find it hard to completely accept and follow. Unless teachers, administrators, Departments of Education, and test writers follow this concept across the board, the way our society measures student achievement, following an entirely based project-based learning curriculum would not work. I do agree that we should try to base a great majority of our curriculum into engaging lessons that relate to student interest, because this is where their true creativity shines through. Baby steps starts with more funding to support project-based learning and more professional development across the board to support teachers in their learning and execution in implementing and planning for these types of lessons.
Designing School Web Sites to Deliver
I really didn't learn that much in this article, because most of it was already covered by Dr. Christie in our class. I did like the rubric for evaluating school websites. Since parents are having more of a choice of where to send their kids, school web sites are used as a way to "shop" for the perfect school. In order to draw our future clients, we must create safe, effective, and working web sites.
How to Plan Your School's Web Site
Again, this article was fairly similar to the previous article about school web sites. Dr. Christie has done an excellent job going through important steps on how to design our site as well as give us tips on what should be found on our sites. Key topics mentioned were the following: make things easy to find; simple navigation bar; eliminate audio files and large graphics (always resize them...we do all know how to use PhotoShop now); and add information that is important for parents and students to know, especially if they are using your site to choose between your school and the next. Make your site offer something that is key but also make it almost identical to any hard copy you would offer parents. One thing I did learn that I almost always look for in a site, but never gave a lot of thought about, was to include on-line forms. Not only are they easy and accesible instantly, they are also time and money savers down the road. I guess we can all now view our own school sites with a constructive eye and possibly offer some tips and suggestions on how to improve the site for whatever audience we are trying to attract.
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2 comments:
Hahhaha! That's funny that you cannot even view the virtual tour from your computer. That made me laugh.
I agree with many of your sentiments about going completely project based with instruction. Can you imagine if your administrator came in at your beginning of the year staff meeting and announced that there is no more of your previous teaching...you're to go all project based? The teachers would freak out. There does need to be training for this, guidance with this, materials for this...or it will never work. Also, how are we supposed to keep our same assessments, AIMS for example, when those are broken up by grade level and age. Seriously, we can have one or the other but not both in the department of high stakes testing and project based learning.
Regarding the designing sites on school web sites, I ended up feeling like I know what I'm doing when I read them. It was a good feeling, and I can thank Dr. Christie for that. I'm so glad that I learned all of this stuff about web design and web quests, because now I can't wait to implement it into my own classroom!
Two phrases stuck with me as I finished reading your blog..."on-line forms" and "shopping for schools". I love it that you always have something different in your blogspace that I never would have thought of in a million years! I think you are one of those people who constantly thinks outside the box. I certainly appreciate that. I find my self saying, "Oh yeah, that IS true." whenever I read your nightly responses.
Anyhow, it's true that in this day and age, parents do have lots of options and if they are smart they'll do some research to put their child in the best possible learning environment. The internet allows parents to do this now with ease.
The addition of on-line forms (i.e.- applications to private schools, for example) can assist parents even further! Not only that but this could help out teachers too! How many times has a parent called you complaining of misplacing their child's field trip slip or emergency contact form? You could just refer them to your website and save yourself a trek down the halls on campus to the school copy machine. Ah, what bliss! The conveniences of modern technology, huh?
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