Our future vision project is coming along nicely. We have a functioning website with a manageable amount of useful information for other educators to access. I’m glad we decided to go with the website format. I find it much more functional than blogs – I don’t like the blog format where you have to scroll to find posts. I prefer to simply click the link that contains the info I’m looking for.
I’m also glad we went with Weebly for our website. It’s very user-friendly and we are able to create a professional-looking result. We haven’t spent too much time worrying about font and images at this point. I feel it’s more important to get the content onto the page first. There is always time later to go back and perfect it.
We have tried to find images that complement the content for each page and link. I do feel that presentation is very important – we don’t want the site to be overly wordy and it needs to be attractive. The whole point is that the site is user-friendly for busy teachers.
I’m quite excited to start using some of these strategies in my classroom this September. I was really inspired by today’s 10 Minutes of Fame presentation on digital storytelling. This would be the perfect activity to try on the iPads! I plan to work my way down the list of ideas we have on our website. Once I have a sense of what works and what can be improved, I would be able to update the site.
I think the greatest challenge for experienced teachers with digital technology is understanding why it is important, and then having support for those crucial first steps into using it for teaching. Inevitably, there are going to be technological glitzches. But there is no denying that digital technologies amplify our human capabilities. Our involvement with digital technology may not actually make teaching easier, more efficient, or even more effective (in certain instances), but it will certainly make for richer, deeper, broader learning experiences, as well as prepare future citizens to use digital technology for learning and social connection. I hope you are building in an interactive element to your online program, so that teachers can also form connections with each other through your resource.