Getting Class Online… Like I have time for that! How to use free and easy Internet sites to create online classrooms

Benefits of Online Classrooms Students can get their assignments anywhere they have Internet access: -Absent -Homebound -ISS -AEP

Benefits of Online Classrooms Parents can see assignments or even track student performance -Parent / Teacher conferences -Parent Involvement

Online classroom ideas (Google Docs)

Add links on your Pewitt site to your online classroom site(s). Benefits: built into Pewitt home site, free for us, calendar and other goodies Drawbacks: harder to use, get into to edit than other kinds of sites

Add just about any kind of classroom content, anytime, anywhere, quick and easy. Benefits: fast, free, easy, kids can create their own sites and you can share info through your own “networks”, ad-free if you ask. Drawbacks: can get really unorganized really fast! Sample:

Real, online classroom…for free! Benefits: you post assignments, kids answer by posting their finished assignments; parents can visit to see when and what their kids have done; calendars and other goodies; saved until next year—quick start! Drawbacks: takes organization; kids can have problems with it at first; takes up class time Sample:

Share information, create without Microsoft! Benefits: free, easy once you get it created, kids love it! Drawbacks: kids have to create their own accounts using addresses, which they don’t have…necessarily (see

iGoogle Create community calendars… Create community documents… Create community websites

Kids can have their own accounts at school Benefits: Students can sign up for iGoogle and other online accounts with their own addresses Drawbacks: Free version (which we have) sends lots of ads and spam to kids

So how do I get started with… When you get there, sign up on the right, under “Get Started.” Create a new page. When you have signed in, you can edit your page.

Editing your wikispace Highlight text on page, click to change to B=Bold, I=Italic, U=Underline, A=text color…just like Microsoft Word! Add bullets and text alignment…just like Word! Highlight text and add hyperlinks Insert pictures and movies Be sure to save, and you’ve published your page to the Internet.

Free Moodle hosting site. Sign up and create your class. Once you get started, you can use basic web editing to get your class going. Tons of online tutorials here: Play around with it and learn as you go. Start small and build from there. Sample site:

When you sign up for an iGoogle account, you should sign up for a Gmail account, too. It’s fun to customize your iGoogle homepage! iGoogle accounts come with Google docs…

Google Docs First, to add a Google Docs link box to your iGoogle homepage, click the “Add stuff” link at the top right Search for “google docs” (box on upper right). When you find it (first hit), click the Add Now button.

Google Docs

You, and your students, can create word processing documents, presentation documents (like PowerPoints), and spreadsheets using Google Docs. And this is FREE. If kids don’t have Word or PowerPoint at home, they can use this to do assignments anyway as long as they have Internet. And these assignments can be saved in Google Docs, online (kinda like !). So they can be stored here forever!

Google Docs class portal So if you create a professional Gmail / iGoogle account and share the password with your students, they can access your posted files, add their own content, and share with peers. Students can add comments to shared documents. Google Docs keeps a trail of changes, so you can revert to an earlier version of any saved document.

sites.google.com After you have set up your iGoogle account, you can set up an iGoogle website. It is very similar to wikispaces.

Google calendar You can set up your own calendar and you can embed it into any of your other pages! (By the way, you can also embed TeacherTube videos in your websites, too!) TeacherTube

Please let me know if you need an list. All students who are in or ever have been in technology should have Gaggle addresses. But if you have a Gmail account…

alternative Instead of using Gaggle, you can use a trick with your Gmail account. Let the kids use a form of your Gmail address. Any response will come to your Gmail account, not theirs. For a kid could use Any response will come to teacher’s inbox, with the +kid…you’ll know who’s

Contact me! view.php?id=2327

Closing thoughts When you create a site, link it somewhere immediately. Keep your usernames and passwords safe. Don’t use the same password on everything…you might want to give others access someday! Kids don’t need to access (or be able to change) anything as you. Keep your online sites updated so people will want to keep visiting. The kids already communicate online…our online sites can use this to our advantage.