Real-Teacher Reasoning

Now more than ever, teachers need to be able to showcase their abilities and share information digitally. Some ways that these things are accomplished are: creating a website for their classroom; communicating with parents via email or social media; and, developing an online portfolio to showcase their skills to prospective employers. For this assignment you will create a website using Weebly that will serve as both a digital portfolio for the assignments created in this class, and a professional website to display your resume, teacher work samples, and contact information. ​

What do I need to turn in?

The deliverable for this assignment is a link to your Weebly website to be submitted via Google Classroom. That’s it! While the content and look of your website will be unique to your experiences and design style, you should use the following guidelines to format your website, using headers, text, and links as needed. ​
Each Digital Portfolio could include the following pages:
  • HOME - This should include an overview of the website and a picture of a classroom (for purposes of this portfolio you may supplement with pictures of classrooms you have worked in or your ideal classroom). Include pictures of yourself and an overview that includes your major. Include an updated resume as a document that can be downloaded.
  • LESSON PLAN - This section should include a title, a new image, a brief overview of the lesson, and the document file for your Technology Lesson Plan. 
  • ASSESSMENT TECHNOLOGY - This section should include a title, a new image, a brief overview of your differentiated Forms quizzes and commentary.
  • DIGITAL FIELD TRIP - This section should include a title, a new image, a brief overview of the assignment, and the document file for your Digital Field Trip. 
  • CONTACT - Include your basic contact information for prospective employers.

How will my project be graded?

Website Design 33%
Overall Quality 33%
Quality of Writing Content 33%
Project is worth 20% of overall course score.

Web-Design Software

Weebly - Recommended

Weebly is the software I use to host my website. It is easy to use and intuitive, and the free version produces genuinely useable hyperlinks. While I am well versed in Sites, I live on Weebly.com, and spend every spare minute there refining my digital workspace. I can easily afford to remove the "powered by Weebly" from the footer of my website but choose not to because I genuinely endorse their web-design software.

Google Sites - Good

Google, which hosts 99.9% of my digital life, makes a perfectly good web-design software called Sites. (Make sure to choose "New" Sites, not "Classic," when starting off.) It is not my recommended software because the link to a free site ends up being something like: www.sites.google.com/125gFtybz/karpie. They're just incomprehensible and barring an existing hyperlink, or paying for a domain, they will never get an actual human to type them in. Also, the software limits font and color choices, and I find the software a little difficult to navigate when it comes to sections and columns. For avid Google users such as myself, the interface is familiar and comforting, but the weird discord between finding your site in "Sites" or "Drive," but never both, or either is off-putting as well for new users.

Exemplars of Actual, 100% Human Work

Hire Me! I'm a Web Designer!

Gillian's site had a few things going for it: impeccably-applied web design principles based on our coursework, intentionally redundant and intuitive hyperlinks, and most importantly, her "me" page. I actually redesigned my own "me" tab because hers was better. It's the only time I've ever had a student's web design work influence my own web design. Enjoy!

Coming soon: a video explanation of why this site is awesome!

Authentic Teacher Images

I used Ms. Lippacher's site as an example because she did an AMAZING job taking authentic looking images of herself as a teacher even without having permission from any students. The images she took and included leave no doubt in an interviewer's mind that she has experience teaching (in field placements.)

It's All About the Homepage

This site is included to show you the impact of an effective homepage. Some people have a simple homepage, but well refined other pages. This student loaded up the homepage with information and links and it really created a "wow" factor as soon as I looked at it. While his other pages are simple, that first impression made by an incredible homepage remains.

Balance Personal and Professional

This student had a lot of personal experience working with actual kids, and as such, her page balances personal and professional images in a way that really says to interviewers, "I am a teacher," as an inextricable part of who she is as a person.

Simple Sophistication and Nesting for Depth

This site is simple and beautiful, and the students use of nesting under the "teaching" tab really gives the site (and herself as an educator) an air of depth and experience. The minute you hover over that [teaching] tab and see six or seven nested resources, you realize the time involved in making this site.
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