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By Kyle, August 16, 2007 10:35 pm

It’s finally up!! The latest version of my classroom website (HunsbergerMath.com) is now up and running, thanks to my new friends at WordPress!

This will now be my third year (and change) using a classroom website. As I look forward to this new website and the full interactivity of it, it seems appropriate to take a look back at the past few incarnations of my classroom website, complete with all their amazing features and drawbacks!

Release 0. (March ’05 – June ’05). I call this release 0 because my first attempt at the classroom website was nothing more than the fruition of the realization that my grading software program, Easy Grade Pro, had the capabilities to publish individual password-protected student grade reports directly to the internet. There wasn’t much of a website, and hunsbergermath.com took the viewer directly to this grades page. Nothing more.

Release 1. (September ’05 – June ’06). Realizing the potential that I now had with my own domain name and the ability to give students and parents access to their grades, I spent part of the summer between my 1st and 2nd year of teaching using Yahoo! SiteBuilder to create a new, improved version of hunsbergermath.com. This site included links to pages dealing with extra credit, projects, classroom rules and procedures. Students could even download the essay topics they would have to write about when they got in trouble. The students seemed to really like this version and frequently would check their grades and ask for ways to use the web for extra credit.

Release 2. (September ’06 – June ’07). The summer following my 2nd year, I wrote and received a grant for Microsoft FrontPage, an extremely powerful website editor. While still consisting of the same basic sections (now divided into sub-categories of “Students”, “Parents”, and “Graduates”), I was able to actually use the FrontPage software to build in some meaningful navigation systems directly into the website. Now, students would not have to reload or hit the “back” button when they wanted to return to specific locations on the website. It was in the middle of this past year that I began experimenting with adding RSS feeds to the site and began wondering how this new Web 2.0 technology could be used to even further enhance my students’ learning capabilities! All of this finally led me to…

Release 3. (September ’07 – ). Beginning this year, I’ve abandoned FrontPage and am now using the free WordPress to create and edit my webpage. In all actuality, the latest incarnation of hunsbergermath.com is nothing more than a fancy blog. Some great advantages of this new online software are amazing, such as:

• I can literally edit the website from any internet connected computer in the world without access to any specific software.
• I can include links to permant pages, such as “Class Documents” and”Grades”.
• I can post constantly changing information, such as current homework assignments
• I can categorize all new information with easily accessed categories.
• I can actually use the website itself to communicate with students through ways such as commenting.

Anyway, all that to say that I am extremely happy and excited about this new opportunity to engage my students with technology this coming year!

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By Kyle, August 10, 2007 9:33 pm

If the title of this post didn’t immediately indicate it, now you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that yes, I am a geek! Oh well. I’ve long since embraced that fact and continue to lavish those around me with it :)

This Monday, I’m in charge of a professional development session for teachers on how to create and manage a blog for their classroom. Instead of creating a typical worksheet, I decided to actually create a blog about blogging (a “meta-blog” for those of my friends who are fans of Douglas Hofstadter)! Right now (Friday night) this seems like a pretty good idea, but we’ll see what happens on Monday. The good news is that the teachers in the training will be able to immediately comment on how the session went. I guess teaching other teachers is one of the things I’ve taken more ownership of at school in the past few years. It’s usually alot of fun to be able to share some things I’ve experienced in my classroom with my colleagues! Anyway, I’m looking forward to a relaxing weekend, and another 3 weeks of professional development before the kids come back in September!

By the way, my comments in the preceding paragraph qualify this posting as a Meta-Meta-Blog for those of you keeping score at home!

Geeks: 1 Jocks: 0

Comments (2)

By Kyle, August 9, 2007 12:25 pm

In honor of beginning a new school year in just under a month (and at risk of further alienating my already disillusioned readers), I’m starting a new blog. This will mostly serve the same function as my previous blog, but just like my new phone number, has quite a few options and features that I love so much more!!! Thanks again for taking the time to read my blog when you probably could be spending your time doing something much more productive. [For those of you who care, this blog is being published with WordPress, which I have found found even more effective than Google's Blogger].