Teacher Pages and Tools

    Hello again! This is the seventh blog post and we will be talking about teacher classroom pages, teacher productivity tools, and my experience with PBWorks. I hope you enjoy this blog post! 

    For this post I went to Mrs. Edwards first grade classroom page from Sierra Elementary School. This page includes information such as a supply list, a calendar, and contact information which is all available to the public. The teacher also included an "About" tab which talks about her life. There she introduces herself along with her family, detailing fun events and outings her family took. This is something similar to what my mom, who is an elementary teacher, does where she writes a letter to the students in order to introduce herself. Overall, the classroom pages seem like a fun way to introduce a teacher and allow easy access for parents to know more about the classroom their child is in. I was surprised that there wasn't more information on the classroom itself. I was imagining that there would be a tab that includes pictures and information of that years class, but there was no tab detailing stuff happening in the current class. Here is a link to the website.

 

    As a professional teacher, productivity tools will be very useful assistant that will help me tremendously. One such tool is Grammarly, which is a productivity tool that assists with grammar errors and typos. It is a very useful tool that can save time in editing papers and other written work. Another productivity tool that is very useful in time management is the Forest app which encourages uninterrupted time working without the temptation of being on your phone. So long as you stay off your phone, the app with grow trees. With this assistance, productivity will increase and time management will be kept better. 

    PBWorks, at first glance, seems confusing. However, the overall similar format to Word helps in learning how to use it. After a small learning curve and some tutorial videos, it becomes simple to use. The scheduled maintenance took about a day, and was up and running afterwards seemingly fine. It allowed edits to be made, but the edits were all deleted up till before the maintenance which wasn't a great experience. Other than that hiccup, the system works well and it is easy to use. It also allows collaborative work, which especially for older students, can be a great way to assign group projects.