Although a Google site offers an excellent way for teachers, students and parents to work in a collaborative and inclusive manner, I have a few concerns about how open it is outside of the classroom. I will always have something like a Google site for my class, however I am still unsure of what I will and will not include. As a current teacher candidate I wonder how much the parents should be involved in their students learning in terms of keeping tabs on how much they have for homework and what they have for homework. For younger students in the primary level I think it is extremely important; however at what point do we let go of that controlled responsibility and give children the room to be independent? Part of learning and growing is being able to independently succeed on your own. I am not even sure what the answer is to this question, but it is something I think about and would love to hear any ideas or thoughts on this topic. As a future teacher I always want the parents to feel included and involved in their child’s learning, however I think at some point there comes a time where students need to learn to succeed on their own, whether it's as simple as finishing their homework without anyone sitting them down at the kitchen table and telling them they can't go out with their friends until their homework is complete.
This is one question that I hope to answer one day when I have a class of my own, however after creating my first Google site I know it will be something I can always incorporate in my classroom. Whether I use it for a presentation or as a class site I think it is something that changes the way we teach and the students learn.
Congratulations on embracing the class site - I loved mine and found it helpful for many of the reasons you mentioned above. I've got a couple things that you might want to consider:
ReplyDeleteDo you want to include a link to the school website?
Do you want to include a few lesson summary pages (vocab, new verb tenses, other new grammar tips)?
Do you want to have a tentative unit plan (or weekly plan) section?
Should your site be bilingual?
Are you going to be using your blog to model the assignments for the students?
Take these with a grain of salt ... it's more a bit of brainstorming than a list of musts.
And with regards to your question on parents, the Goldilocks principle applies. Some parents will be too involved and do too much for their students, some will have very limited involvement, and some will scaffold. The 'too hot' parents will always find ways to be involved so why not give them a tool to focus their energies. The students of 'too cold' parents will need another resource and the website will be ideal. The others ... it's a nice quick summary for a check in from time to time as necessary.