A website is not a placemat...
![Placemat Website picture](/uploads/1/2/1/0/12102544/8437570.png?273)
Putting a placemat on the table with your name and email address, a few words about who you are and what grade you teach is NOT a website. Would you want to visit your placemat every day to see if something had changed? I think not. This doesn't mean, however, that you should put cute animated clipart dancing around on your site. In fact, that would be one of the worst things you could do. People with a propensity toward seizures would pass out and others would just never come back. I know I wouldn't come back.
So what do you need on your website? In a word: INTERACTIVITY.
Content needs to be fresh, not stagnant. If you are a Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest user, you know what I mean. If the posts on those sites never changed, you'd have no compelling reason to go back. And those sites certainly are compelling. So, we can learn a lesson from the sites that we tend to visit the most. Think about what draws you back to your favorite websites, and then use those same principles to generate active, relevant content on your site.
My advice? Use these three things:
- Have content that can easily be changed;
- automatically feed to your class Twitter account and
- has student input and/or content that changes on a minimum of a weekly basis.
We want students to reflect on their practice just as we need to reflect on ours. A blog that is generated by the students themselves is something that they can take ownership of and showcases the creative, collaborative, critical thinking communicators in your room. (Which should be all of them, by the way!)
"So where do I start?"
- Go sign up for a free Weebly.com account and create your first site. This is an intuitive site and uses a drag-and-drop interface that even the least comfortable user can handle. Weebly Tutorials
- Plan out your site. Look at sites that are interesting and make you want to go back. Do your own Pinterest search or follow one like Classroom Websites Board.
- Follow a few general design principles for websites:
- Use a standard font (typeface) throughout the site:
- nothing "flow-y or show-y" to make it easy to read by anyone, including screen readers.
- Stick to one or two colors of text.
- Never use a black background. It isn't accessible for people with sight challenges.
- Use more pages rather than longer pages.
- Put things in alphabetical order if at all possible.
- Try not to cram lots of pictures in one place.
- Try to use authentic photos from your classroom (not ever of children's faces or names!) rather than stock design photos.
- Attempt to avoid education jargon. This site is for your students and parents that may be unfamiliar with what terms or acronyms we use in education.
- Use lots of "white space" around your text and graphics. Attempt to balance out what you see on the page so it's easy to find things and pleasing to the eye.
- Use a standard font (typeface) throughout the site:
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