Developing a Class Website

As I reflect on developing a class website for my students and families, it seems at once both overwhelming and exciting! Overwhelming simply because there are so many new things that I've learned in this course that can be incorporated into a class site - voicethread, interactive spreadsheets, wikis, digital stories, blogs... What's most exciting is that I no longer feel that it's an unimaginable feat to create a class website. However, creating a site does seem intimidating as far as knowing the Do's and Don'ts of design, copyright, and privacy. Our text provides good information and better yet, the authors provide many resources for teachers who are thinking about designing a website for their class. Some sites that are worth checking out are: Freeplay Music, which is a copyright-free site with a wealth of music genres; Find Sounds, which a free search tool for a library of many environmental, animal, and musical sounds; Google Sites and Wikispaces for website creation; Jacob Nielsen’s Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design for guidance in designing your site and Web Accessibility Tips to make your site accessible for individuals with disabilities. I'd like to learn more about using alt to make graphic images accessible for the visually impaired. I'm unclear about what this is even after reading about it in the text, but I'd how to accomplish this in order to provide access. What's also helpful is that the text online companion provides links (chapter 12) for award-winning examples of classroom websites. They're fun to check out and it's helpful to look at the approaches used by different teachers.

As an itinerant special educator, my situation is a little more unusual than the majority of teachers. I'd like to use a class wiki (probably using Google Sites or Wikispaces as they both contains very user-friendly, attractive templates and they're free) for my students and their families primarily as a resource and, possibly in the future, as a means of interacting with each other, via a blog on the wiki. My vision of a future wiki or website is to have pages that share student work, study guides, links to a variety of resources for students and parents, relevant podcasts, and more, more, more. For example, I would like to have a resources page that provides links to find information about hearing loss, assistive technology, captioned media, scholarships for college, etc. I'd like to have another page that provides activities for students to learn about the parts of the ear, the process of hearing, etc. It would be helpful if I could include an embedded animated video about the process of hearing for a visual guide to a written explanation. Another page could provide activities to practice using auditory skills. The options are limitless. I suppose the ultimate lesson for me is that this course has enabled me to use these technologies to supplement what I do with students and provide more for them and their families, and in turn, more for me.