As I've started to plan this website it has occurred to me that I've needed a website as a teacher for as long as I've been a teacher. As a drama teacher, no school I've ever taught at has ever had anything much in the way of resource materials available for my content area. My last school didn't even have drama textbooks and had no intent to buy any either. No school library has ever seemed to have more than half a dozen drama-related texts and an outdated box of freebies from the local public television station.
As a result I've made a whole lot of materials/project sheets/instructional videos over the years. A website would be an opportunity to corral all of my resources in one handy digital cyber-source. The students could access the site for their readings/assignments etc and other drama teachers might find useful material as well. Some instructional videos I posted on YouTube for use by my classes now have thousands of hits so I know somebody is using them.
At present I'm planning a fairly static resource site which I'll host commercially. After the 40-80 hours I imagine it will take to put up the 30 "pages " currently planned, I can see that this site will require about two hours a week to tweak, maintain and update the blog. All content in progress can be stored on my external hard-drive (useful at school when the wireless is down too.) The initial site could be up and running by November 15,2012 with a commitment of 10-15 hours a week from now until then. I'll have to pay for hosting, but that's the only cash expense predicted right now.
I polled students last year when I was teaching and at that point at least 85% of my students had home/phone internet access. 100% had school access as Fayette County is pretty technologically savvy. My ultimate goal for the site is that it enables me to "flip" my drama classroom in order to efficiently maximize classroom time. When I'm spending my class time focused on activities rather than readings and instructional video that could be viewed before class at home I'll know the site is a success
A website is definitely a great tool for compiling all your drama-related materials that others can use too. The layout of your website is very neat and simple, Valerie. I think, it would be better if you will add tabs in the beneath your website name. You can also add social media icons so that your visitors can easily communicate with you.
ReplyDelete*David Byrd