I originally posted this on my class website for use in a presentation to my staff in January 2011. Some districts provide (and some require) teachers with web space for use with their students. Here are some suggestions, listed from least to most labour intensive. Feel free to share your own ideas in the comments below.

Consider three audiences for your site: students, parents, and teachers. Students may use the website like an agenda, or a textbook - sources of information for organizing, reviewing, or engaging in class activities. Parents will use it as a window into the classroom to see what the child is learning. Other teachers may also use your site as a source of inspiration or a resource for their own students.

There are many ways to use a website; three broad categories are:

Permanent and Ongoing Items - uploaded once but may be accessed throughout the year as required. These are items whose usefulness extends over a term or year. Minimal time is required to post these kinds of items and ongoing maintenance is rarely an issue.

Long Term Items are more likely to be uploaded a few times a year / term. These are items whose usefulness is derived from a specific unit of study. These items may be accessed several times during a unit or term. The time required to post these items varies, but can usually make use of product you already have created for print and copying.

Short Term Items are generated day-to-day as necessary. They have limited usefulness beyond the scope of the particular unit, but serve to organize student work, and to communicate to parents what the kids are doing. This is an ongoing time commitment and you need to determine whether posting the item will serve the immediate needs of you and your students. Unless there is a specific requirement to visit the site, or you have students away, these items are rarely visited by students but still serve to inform parents and other teachers.

Some content possibilities from items you have already:

Existing or newly created files / worksheets / assignment pages (word, powerpoint, excel, etc.)

Photos / audio / video files of activities and product

Pictures / scans of exemplars, whiteboard work, pages from books or handwritten handouts

Links to online resources (youtube, interactive sites, online quizes)

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