http://kraftclassroom.weebly.com
MMP Reflection
The objective that I had in mind when creating the idea for my MMP was to create an organized website that can help students with missing class and needing make up work. When I was student teaching, absences in my classroom happened at a very high rate. The students would come back to class after missing days of work and asked for the work they missed. I rarely ever received their make-up work, and I did not see any of them borrow notes from their classmates. The website that I created was meant for them to find the make-up assignments there, and set up a means for them to turn in assignments. On the “class materials” tab, there are two different sets of materials provided for the students. There are slideshows of the notes that they missed that day, so they can scroll at their own pace and copy down the notes from there. Also, accompanying the slideshow, are screencasts of the same slideshows. These screencasts, however, contain the lectures that I would give to the students in class. I usually add extra information when presenting the material to the students, so I did not want them to miss any of the information that the other students received.
The role of technology in my project does reflect what we have learned this semester. I wanted to incorporate different aspects from this course that I now have experience with, to expose these means of technology to my students. This was seen through the design principles that were kept in mind when creating the layout of my site, and the importance of and relationship of audio and video to enhance the learning process. Also, the discussion questions being turned in on the website rather than on a piece of paper in school, helps the students familiarize themselves with using technology inside and outside of the classroom.
I feel very accomplished at the end of my project. My final website was created on Weebly after some unfortunate occurrences. I originally looked at Weebly to create my class website on, but I decided to use Google Classroom inside, because I did not think I would have the capabilities to properly design a Weebly site. After making two Google Classrooms, and being removed from both, I only had a week to create my new MMp site. Within that week, I was able to create a site on Weebly; one that I think is better than the one that I had planned on Google Classroom. One of the design principles that I picked up in this course and used on my website was the use of white space. ALthough there are graphics at certain spaces of my site, the overall feel, seems to have a planned simplicity about it due to the white spaces on the different pages.
Since I am not a teacher yet, this website currently does not have a specific purpose. Instead, I see it as more of a guideline of what to use in my future classroom. When I obtain a teaching position, I will most likely upgrade to the Premium version of Weebly to have more capabilities. With the added uses, I would constantly build my website with each unit.The website as it is, is an example of what the website would look like for a specific unit. When I have my own classroom, I plan on having the different units being the different pages. For example, this website discussed the unit of post-Revolutionary War America. With many many units to cover, I would have one page for post-Revolutionary War America, that contains all of the class materials, do-nows, and discussion questions. The other tabs would also contain the different units that we will end up learning throughout the year. The implementation of this site would help keep me organized as a new teacher. The students would be responsible for keeping up with the website as a requirement for their grade. If it ends up being successful, I would share it with my fellow teachers to share and receive tips and advice.
