Well, I am glad I started my homework website last year, and I'll continue it this year. I found many benefits:
* I made one of the 1st homework assignments be for parents to look at the site and send me an e-mail. This gave me their address for sending home grades, and it also made them aware.
* It gave me a place to post extra worksheets and solutions where they could download them (I didn't do this too much, but maybe will increase it this year)
* Students had an easy way to find homework assignments for whatever reasons.
* Parents now had a place to see/check whether their children had homework or tests coming up.
This year ... (with my 4 PREPS!) I'll continue it, and I want to enhance it:
* I want to somehow incorporate quick easy-to-make-&-upload videos showing various math techniques (I'll film them).
* I potentially want to link to videos from TeacherTube (since YouTube is blocked at our campus).
* I want to post notes for students that are absent (this one I'm iffy about for a variety of reasons: difficulty, space issues, student accountability, ...)
All in all, I'm happy with weebly.com. Hopefully, it will continue to be free or even cheap, and hopefully they'll resist putting ads on their/my page since that was a big draw for me.
I love the 1st homework idea - thanks!
ReplyDeleteI'd love to see how you use your page. Could I get a link? Here's my school website. We just started in January and I love having the notes posted online. One girl came in after missing a week of school for her dad's funeral and said that she already had all of the notes from while she was gone. It really puts the responsibility on students to get what they missed.
ReplyDeleteAs far as video taping, I think there are programs out there online that would be able to record your computer movements. Align that with an interactive white board or a pen and tablet and you could do a lot for them.
http://www.isd300.k12.mn.us/HS/HS_DEPT/Science/becky_haack/default.aspx
Becky,
ReplyDeleteIt's not a super high tech site, but I love the google calendar that shows the assignments. It's easy to set up and embed and change daily. Send me e-mail, and I'll send you my site link: math_mambo@yahoo.com.
I like the cool pictures on your site and the notes. It's another motivating idea for me to try.