I loved investigating all of the free educational social networking sites that are out today. My favorite free website for my classroom is from www.yola.com/ Like everything you can upgrade to a fancier version but the free website has quite a lot of features. If you want to own your own domain the upgrade works for that, but I am happy to just getmswardsfirstgrade.yolasite.com in this domain for free. Another thing I liked about this site is you can blog with your classmates, upload assignments, use Google translate for the text in any language as well as create a Google calendar of any events that are occurring in the classroom from snack to testing times. I think technology out there is amazing for students to keep a relationship between parents, teachers, and students. We do have to be careful about social networking with the younger audiences, I would NOT recommend Facebook for this audience it is too dangerous and social networking in education needs to have a babysitter and approval of things before it can go viral.
I have never heard of yola! I will have to check it out. Technology certainly helps connect us with parents. I know my parents enjoy being able to get copies of newsletters online, pull up calendars, assignments, etc. I will have to go check out yola now!
ReplyDeleteMaggie
ReplyDeleteThis is a great resource. As a parent and a teacher, I LOVE teacher websites. I don't know why every teacher doesn't have one. I often feel very out of touch with my sons' classes and what they are doing in school. I had a website, similar to yours, when I was teaching 4th and 5th. I put everything up there from homework like spelling lists to field trip sign ups on my website. My parents really appreciated it. BTW, http://www.signupgenius.com/ is a really cool free sight where parents can sign up for anything including field trips, reading groups, or parent teacher conferences. I posted a link to my sign up on my website so they were able to access everything from one site.
Beth
Maggie,
ReplyDeleteI have to say I never heard of this wesite source for education and I am very impressed by it. I am in awe of the ability for the website to translate site into foriegn languages. I have utilized weebly.com for a website used for class, but I am thinking on switching to this platform for its ability to create blogs for student use. Thank you for the information.
Jim Orbin
Maggie,
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this site. Social Networking has the power to transform the classroom. Social Networking provides students with the ability to learn at their own pace on their own time, gives them the opportunity to connect and collaborate with other students, and provides a fresh new approach to learning new content.
Tangie