Noticias em eLiteracias

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✇ Free Technology for Teachers

Don't Rely Social Media for Distributing Important School Information

10 de Agosto de 2023, 13:02

Last year I wrote about the qualities of a good school district website. Unfortunately, the school district in which my kids go to school didn't read that blog post or didn't take any action based on it. That was driven home this week as we attempted to find the school supply lists and the schedule for the start of the school for our kids.

The obvious place to look for a school supply list and the schedule for the start of the school year is the school's website. Unfortunately, that has been updated since the end of the last school year. Supply lists? Nowhere to be found. Schedule? The calendar for August is completely blank. 

So how did we find the information that we needed? A friend who used to work in the district shared a Facebook post with me. At that point it was three days old! And what if I didn't use Facebook (like an increasing number of people)? We'd still be wondering about supply lists and schedules. 

As I wrote last year, make the information that parents need the first and most obvious thing on your school's website. Nobody is going to the school's website in August to find out the results of a fundraising challenge from the previous spring nor do they care about pictures from a staff development meeting. 

On a related note, here are my thoughts on newsletters versus social media and blogs for tech coaches

p.s. I still think it's criminal that public schools don't provide all of the resources that students need. Supply lists that cost families $50+ per student represent a financial hardship for many families and puts their children at a disadvantage from the first day of school. 



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✇ Free Technology for Teachers

Two Ways to Create Simple and Focused Websites

8 de Agosto de 2023, 00:05

At this time of year I am often asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. The purpose isn’t to share everything they’ve done and have you grade it. Tools like Seesaw and Spaces are good for that. The purpose of these kinds of sites is to share photography, their resumes, videos they’ve made, or awards and references they’ve received.

Google Sites is fine for making simple sites, but the aesthetics still have a long way to go. Services like WordPress and Wix are great, but they have way more menus and options than what's needed for a quick and simple site. Fortunately, there are some good tools students can use to quickly create simple, good-looking websites to showcase their work and share a bit about themselves. Here are a couple that are worth trying.

Carrd.co is an easy-to-use tool to quickly create good-looking, simple websites. I used to to create a little photography showcase site in less than ten minutes. It looks much better than anything I could have created with Google Sites or WordPress. Watch this short demo to see how you can create a portfolio site with Carrd.co.



Adobe Express has a webpage creator that offers a fantastic way to create simple websites in which your students can include images, text, and videos. Consider having your students arrange their pages chronologically so that the top of the page shows their work at the beginning of the year and then as viewers scroll down they see your students' latest work. Click here for a video tutorial on how to use Adobe Express to create a simple website.



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