Suggestions for planning page content

The intent of Classrooms Online is to enable you to provide your students and their families online access to your course information. Before planning the content of your teacher web page, preview the link to legal issues on web publication.

It is strongly recommended that educational materials published on your site be limited to those you have developed personally. Guidelines for fair use and copyright limitiations need to be carefuly researched before including material developed by others. Materials contributed by colleagues should be appropriately credited.

One of your goals needs to be to give your students reason to visit your site often. The information on it needs to be concise, pertinent, and current. Added incentive is provided if they can count on often finding new tidbits of information that obviously benefit them in the classroom. Use information that is appropriate for your class. If they regularly find a hint for that tough math problem, a tip for improving a paragraph, a clue about a particular event or character in a book that will be covered on a quiz, a brief review the night before the test of a science concept that many found confusing, or occasionally a few points for including a quote from your site on a homework assignment, they will visit your site more often.

The content of your page can be simple or elaborate. Consider beginning with a minimal amount of information until you know how much time is required to maintain your site. One of the pitfalls is to bite off more than you can handle and become discouraged. Slowly add more content when it is evident that you have the time to publish and maintain more information. Each of you will have valuable suggestions for web page content to share with other teachers.

You need to begin with the most basic general, long-term information about your course and a minimal amount of information on your current teaching unit that needs regular maintenance. You might originally limit the general information to the name of your course and the author and title of your textbook. For your current teaching unit, you might simply list 2 or 3 major topics or concepts, the homework assignment for each class meeting this week, the test date, and an incentive tidbit (as described above).

As you have time to add more general information, consider including a statement of your policies concerning make-up work and late assignments, an explanation of your method of average a student's grade, a course description, course prerequisites, an overview of the course content, suggestions for good study techniques, a list of supplementary resource materials, tutorial opportunities.

When it is evident that you can continually maintain a heavier volume of current unit information, consider adding one or more of these items: a list or outline of major concepts or topics in the unit, lecture notes and study materials, work done during class each day (for the benefit of absentees), homework summaries and due dates, sample quiz questions, recommended resources, extra credit opportunities, requirements, grading rubrics, and due dates for major projects, reminders about notable activities, such as field trips, major projects, or major tests.

Information about special activities or acknowledgement of significant accomplishments can be interesting and encouraging to students, but keep in mind that our school district protects our students by restricting the publication of information that identifies students. Documentation must be submitted and approved, prior to web publication, to guarantee that these district guidelines are understood and followed.