Chanatown

This week, I had a few epiphanies with regards to using Microsoft SharePoint.  Although I have been training the majority of new teacher website requests using Google Sites, we continue to have a large contingent of teachers using SharePoint for their site construction and we continue to use the platform for many department Intranet and special project sites.  Forced to tool around the admin site of things, I made a few interesting discoveries that will help many of our teachers and add functionality to several sites. These features may not be anything new to you, so feel free to bypass this post. Otherwise, read on for the eye-opening discoveries.

Image via CrunchBase "What's for homework?" or "When is our next test?" or "When is my final essay due?" are probably some of the most common questions a teacher will get asked during class. Prior to creating my own teacher website, I tried to have a syllabus for each unit and students would get a 2-3 week snapshot of all the homework assignments, lab experiments, and tests. With teacher websites becoming more popular, sharing this information online becomes a great way to keep our students (and parents) informed. Using our website trilogy as a starting point, we will now take a look at a few ways to share what's due and when.

Another day, another post completing a trilogy. This time, we're taking a deeper look at some things you can do beyond the basics for both SharePoint and Google Sites. As mentioned in both post #1 (Know Thine Audience) and post #2 (Form and Function) , I suggest that teachers get a firm grasp of their website's audience and then determine the type and amount of content they wish to maintain. With those elements in place, layout, design, and colors can become a focus, and often, this is where the fun and exciting part of creating a website really comes into play.

This link will take you to the Agenda for the Teacher Websites workshop. This workshop is part of a week-long series of voluntary technology trainings provided by Evanston Township High School (ETHS).  Its main objective is to train teachers across disciplines on the features, benefits, and impact of designing, creating, and maintaining a classroom website.

Just recently, we switched over to Microsoft SharePoint for web page development for our department and teacher websites. Having a website and using FrontPage for several years as a classroom teacher, I was not exactly overwhelmed with the idea of switching over, learning a new interface, and moving all of my materials over to the new site. I felt worse for other early adopting teachers who made the move to Moodle only to find limited support not too long after. Thus, I am being cautious with how I handle the rollout of Google Apps in my new position as Technology Staff Developer. On one hand, I see this great potential for an application that is for the most part, very user friendly, allows for nearly real time collaboration, and is all housed externally. On the other hand, I can already hear the teachers (and I wouldn't blame them) yell and scream about yet another technology tool that in their minds and with good reason could soon be replaced. In what might be the s...

During the last week before break, and fresh from my attendance at Google Teacher Academy, I decided to offer presentations and workshops for our faculty and staff during all three lunch periods. Details, links, and reflections for each workshop follow below, and all presentations can be found here . Monday, December 14, 2009 Tablet Training 101: At ETHS , we have rolled out 250+ Tablet PC's to our faculty. This year, English and World Languages teachers received tablets. I decided to focus this workshop on the basics of using a Tablet in class to ink on MS Word and MS PowerPoint files. Tuesday, December 15, 2009 SharePoint 101: During the past year, we have adopted MS SharePoint as the main vehicle for our teacher websites, displacing both Moodle and MS FrontPage . It has been one of my main responsibilities to help teachers learn and use SharePoint especially since our webmaster's departure earlier this year. This workshop focused on a brief discussion of ShareP...