Blog Journal 7

     My schools never made teachers have class websites, most likely because we always used some sort of LMS such as Schoology, Google Classroom, or Canvas to provide course information and other important resources. Most of the example websites I looked at did not contain any students' personal information, such as grades or email addresses. Some contained links to Canvas pages or other sites, so maybe those would contain that information in the "People" tab for the class. Each website consistently had some sort of calendar to update students and parents on what work was due and what content was being covered in the upcoming weeks. Additionally, the teacher's contact info (mainly email) was displayed clearly so parents and students could reach out with questions. Here are two of the websites I used: Julie Dowdy's Page and Mrs. Depaepe's Page.

    As a teacher, one of my main responsibilities includes effectively communicating with students and parents. Having a class website with either a question/message box or a link to my contact info would ensure that everyone is able to contact me if necessary. Utilizing LMS such as Canvas can help me organize my course resources, assignments, and other information so that all students can have easy access to it all in one place. Additionally, scheduling applications such as Calendly or Doodle would streamline appointment booking and meeting coordination, something that is especially important for parent conferences. I may also explore interactive presentation tools such as Nearpod so that my students are able to engage with the lesson content and get excited about learning.

    The Canvas group tool was something I actually had not used before. I teach a colloquium, though, so I have had to operate my own Canvas page before. One thing I disliked about it was that multiple people could not work on the page at once. There was one situation in which I wrote out what I wanted to put in the chart and hit "Save", but another student did the same thing at the same time and their data got saved instead. This meant that when we worked on it, we either had to all be together operating on one person's computer, or we had to be clear about when each of us was trying to do our part so as to not override the other person's data. I did like the functionality of being able to design our table how we wanted, include hyperlinks, etc.. I don't necessarily have a different tool to recommend for that kind of project, as I think Canvas pages worked well, at least once we figured out how to make it work most effectively.