Using Technology Tools - Community Outreach
There are a variety of ways to develop and maintain lines of communication with your students, parents, and the larger community, other than Community Outreach. None of these involve dipping into your copier budget and printing newsletters or updates for your students to bring home. Let's talk about blogs, webpages, and social networks...
Wordpress
Although its traditional use is as a free blogging tool, Wordpress (Links to an external site.) also includes the ability to create almost unlimited numbers of pages (and subpages) which can be placed into a customizable navigation scheme. This means that you can not only serialized current content pieces through easy to create blog postings, you can have a largely static set of content, similar to a website.
Wordpress allows you to have blogs hosted at their main site, which means your address will be something.wordpress.com. It also means that your students are only a click or two away from visiting other sites on Wordpress (including inappropriate ones.)
Should you purchase your own web hosting and domain name, you can install (or have installed) the basic code for Wordpress (Links to an external site.), providing for a greater level of customization. There are a variety of third-party plugins that allow you to insert bells and whistles like image sliders, fancy drop-downs, related posts, embeddable items, site registration and more.
Blogger
Another blog-based site creation tool, Blogger (Links to an external site.) is owned by Google. Which means, of course, that you may have access to this tool via your G Suite for Education toolbox (unless, of course, your site administrator has shut it off.) You can always get your arguments in order and approach your administration to see if they'll provide access to the educators.
Blogger's blogging tool is simpler than Wordpress, and doesn't include the bells and whistles. But as a blogging tool, it gets the job done, and allows you to leverage other items in Google Drive and/or Calendar and Forms. Consider Blogger if you're looking to get started with blogging.
Some G Suite for Education campuses have allowed access to Blogger for certain students, under the guidance of their teacher, for the purpose of creative, ongoing writing. Comments and viewing can be limited to only those who are members of the G Suite for Education domain (teachers and other students,) and comments are not anonymous, making everyone responsible for what they say.
School-provided Class page
There are a lot of campuses out there that have a website creation tool for their school and/or district. Many of these have pages parked and ready for each teacher (or one can be spinned up in just a few minutes.)
Ask your administrator and IT person if there is a webpage builder availble for your classroom, and use it to provide helpful links to some of your other web-based tools (like Google Classroom, or your Twitter and Pinterest feeds) or your blog...
You can also use your school-provide class page to provide contact information, homework assignments, and a calendar of what's coming up in your class.
I mentioned previously your ability to leverage Twitter as a means of communicating what's going on in your classroom.Twitter is an easy to use tool, allowing you to share images with information, or hyperlinks to Google Docs or folders and files stored in Drive, links to websites, and more.
Once you've got an account and have established your Twitter name (or "handle",) feel free to link to your Twitter account on your class website, Edmodo or Google Classroom, and elsewhere. Tell parents that they can follow your account on Twitter to see everything that is posted.
You can post a tweet (or even an image) with the homework assignment, reminders of upcoming due dates, clarifications, calls for chaperones or classroom helpers, a need for supplies and more.
As with Twitter, you can leverage the image-based social network Instagram (Links to an external site.) to reach those parents and students who prefer to go this route. Post images with text in them on any subject you desire, same as with Twitter.
If you've got parental permission, you can post what students are up to. Otherwise, post photos of incredible work your class is doing, because your parents really do want to know - and students love to see their work posted online.
Consider this: As with any public facing representation of your campus, you'll want to make sure your administrator knows what you're up to, and how you are controlling the privacy of your student body. You'll also want to show your administrators how you're monitoring (or limiting) comments that can be tied to what you post.
We previously shared our thoughts regarding communicating with our parents and learners using social networking tools. How comfortable are you with the thought of maintaining lines of communication via a website or blog? (Or both?)
Using Technology Tools - Community Outreach
Using Technology Tools - Community Outreach
There are a variety of ways to develop and maintain lines of communication with your students, parents, and the larger community, other than Community Outreach. None of these involve dipping into your copier budget and printing newsletters or updates for your students to bring home. Let's talk about blogs, webpages, and social networks...
Wordpress
Although its traditional use is as a free blogging tool, Wordpress (Links to an external site.) also includes the ability to create almost unlimited numbers of pages (and subpages) which can be placed into a customizable navigation scheme. This means that you can not only serialized current content pieces through easy to create blog postings, you can have a largely static set of content, similar to a website.
Wordpress allows you to have blogs hosted at their main site, which means your address will be something.wordpress.com. It also means that your students are only a click or two away from visiting other sites on Wordpress (including inappropriate ones.)
Should you purchase your own web hosting and domain name, you can install (or have installed) the basic code for Wordpress (Links to an external site.), providing for a greater level of customization. There are a variety of third-party plugins that allow you to insert bells and whistles like image sliders, fancy drop-downs, related posts, embeddable items, site registration and more.
Blogger
Another blog-based site creation tool, Blogger (Links to an external site.) is owned by Google. Which means, of course, that you may have access to this tool via your G Suite for Education toolbox (unless, of course, your site administrator has shut it off.) You can always get your arguments in order and approach your administration to see if they'll provide access to the educators.
Blogger's blogging tool is simpler than Wordpress, and doesn't include the bells and whistles. But as a blogging tool, it gets the job done, and allows you to leverage other items in Google Drive and/or Calendar and Forms. Consider Blogger if you're looking to get started with blogging.
Some G Suite for Education campuses have allowed access to Blogger for certain students, under the guidance of their teacher, for the purpose of creative, ongoing writing. Comments and viewing can be limited to only those who are members of the G Suite for Education domain (teachers and other students,) and comments are not anonymous, making everyone responsible for what they say.
School-provided Class page
There are a lot of campuses out there that have a website creation tool for their school and/or district. Many of these have pages parked and ready for each teacher (or one can be spinned up in just a few minutes.)
Ask your administrator and IT person if there is a webpage builder availble for your classroom, and use it to provide helpful links to some of your other web-based tools (like Google Classroom, or your Twitter and Pinterest feeds) or your blog...
You can also use your school-provide class page to provide contact information, homework assignments, and a calendar of what's coming up in your class.
I mentioned previously your ability to leverage Twitter as a means of communicating what's going on in your classroom.Twitter is an easy to use tool, allowing you to share images with information, or hyperlinks to Google Docs or folders and files stored in Drive, links to websites, and more.
Once you've got an account and have established your Twitter name (or "handle",) feel free to link to your Twitter account on your class website, Edmodo or Google Classroom, and elsewhere. Tell parents that they can follow your account on Twitter to see everything that is posted.
You can post a tweet (or even an image) with the homework assignment, reminders of upcoming due dates, clarifications, calls for chaperones or classroom helpers, a need for supplies and more.
As with Twitter, you can leverage the image-based social network Instagram (Links to an external site.) to reach those parents and students who prefer to go this route. Post images with text in them on any subject you desire, same as with Twitter.
If you've got parental permission, you can post what students are up to. Otherwise, post photos of incredible work your class is doing, because your parents really do want to know - and students love to see their work posted online.
Consider this: As with any public facing representation of your campus, you'll want to make sure your administrator knows what you're up to, and how you are controlling the privacy of your student body. You'll also want to show your administrators how you're monitoring (or limiting) comments that can be tied to what you post.
We previously shared our thoughts regarding communicating with our parents and learners using social networking tools. How comfortable are you with the thought of maintaining lines of communication via a website or blog? (Or both?)