Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Where to share?

I have a lot of student work that I'd like to share. 
Of course, I want to share it with parents. 
I'd also like to share with interested people in the education community. I know that for me, one of the best ways the Internet has completely made teaching easier and more enjoyable is by giving me access to what other teachers and students are doing. When I see student work that I like, I am quick to think of ways to adapt it to my students and my school. 
While I want to share, I also really want and need to be efficient. Share smarter not harder.
I'm here to tell you that I have tried several strategies already including blogs, nings, wikis, a password-protected site called edline for which our school pays a yearly subscription fee...
I'm starting to feel like an online litterbug of sorts, putting my things all over and not keeping them neat and organized. That is one issue for me, being organized and having things make sense in terms of navigation and layout, as well as being visually appealing. The other issue I face is that no matter where I share their children's work, very few parents take the time to go look at it. I think that this is because technology is not yet fully integrated at our school; it is seen as an "extra." That is a topic for another post, though.

I decided to ask my PLN on twitter what they do.

Here is what they said:


It looks like everyone is finding different things that work for them. 
Here are some examples I like. 
Langwitches    I like how organized this site is. Everything in one place and easy on the eyes. Silvia has multiple blogs and places she shares, but they are all linked here to the main site. You could probably spend days reading this amazing blog and following links, and get yourself a thorough education in technology integration at the elementary level. 
Cliotech's wiki This wiki impresses me with the way it is organized. It also seems to be a really complete site with so much in one place.
A table of contents Here's an idea. Put all your stuff all over the place, but then catalogue it with links in a "Where's all your stuff?" place. 
Vicky's wiki Another excellent example. She really uses the wiki and linked blog to communicate to students and parents as well as to show what they're doing. It makes sense and is all in one place and easy to navigate. This is the idea I was trying to emulate when I started my school wiki this year.
All of these examples represent an amazing amount of work!

I have this blog, which I really want to keep as a professional space. Obviously it is public and any parents can easily find it, but its purpose is not to communicate to parents. I also started a blog (which I will not link to because I haven't kept up with it)to share lesson plans and projects with students/parents, as well as a wiki in progress(with the same intended audience- students and parents). I also post work on edline and share samples on various nings. I suppose it is part of my desire to focus that I want to have all of my work in one place or at least all linked to one place. Or maybe I should just let go and post things all over the web and let google take care of it for me.
Where do you share?

1 comment:

montgorp said...

I keep a blog for parents. Its dormant at the moment coz our school year has not started yet,
heymrmont.edublogs.org

I agree about keeping a professional space. Mine is montgorp.com

I find passwords useless. Parents won't use to passworded sites. Has to be easy for them.