Expectations of Teacher Web Pages

After navigating through the New Jersey DFGs, and then district websites, I landed on a web page created by a 6^th grade Language Arts teacher at the Hill School in Trenton, NJ.  Diane Biegley’s website is nice in that it provides an up to date place where parents and students can go to check when various assignments are due, and also to learn a bit about the scope and meaning of the assignments (this could be helpful for parents as they oversee their children’s work).  The web page also serves as an introductory or greeting place, where Ms. Biegley shares some information with students and parents about the mission of the course.  This satisfies the first of Dr. Jamie MacKenzie’s “Four Primary Goals of a Website” shared in an article on FNO.org.

However, my critique of the website is that - beyond this assignment and introductory information - the website’s function is fairly minimal.  There are no links to helpful, external educational sources, although the teacher has created a “Reference” section, which includes some “Persuasive Essay Tips” to assist the reading/writing students in her course.  My other critique is that there is no interactive component of the website.  There are no message boards, or other means, where students and/or parents can enter discussion with one another or the teacher.  According to MacKenzie, an interactive component may also include a place where students’ works can be displayed, especially when done well, to encourage quality works to be produced by students.  There are relatively simple and easy ways to achieve some of these technological goals for a website, which may foster a better sense of community among classmates beyond the classroom, and allow parents to have an even better sense of what is expected of their children.