Developing a Homepage for Your Classroom

Chapter 12

Teaching with the Internet K-12 –
New Literacies for New Times

Leu, Leu, and Coiro

Just as I liked the phrase “Instead of being a sage on the stage, a teacher is now a scribe on the side”, the phrase “four-for” has special meaning when developing a homepage.

These four ideas could even be listed on the homepage as an educational incentive to use it. Children can publish their work on it for others to read. A safe link to Internet locations can be set up. It helps other people who visit the site. For students having computers, it forges the band between home and school. The homepage is a display that shows teachers are being professional while using new modern literacies to guide students’ education.

The textbook said, “A good homepage is a gold mine for us all.” Other great features on the homepage could be a newsletter, Weblogs or daily classroom events, blogs, digital class photos, bulletin board of assignments due, links to the Web for class units taught, word of the day, the daily schedule, parent corner, and a photo tour of the classroom.

As Leu, Leu, and Coiro state using a home page can enhance the five major functions of new literacies which are identifying questions, navigating the Internet, evaluating information, and synthesizing information found to answer the questions and to communicate.

I found favorable the Internet Workshop set up by Tama Forth for her class. It was an explicit search in safe search engines and was purposeful. Students were able to locate and write URL’s and the title of the best sites for early Missions of California on a desktop location.

What I found helpful was the suggestion of the teacher’s E-mail address on the home page to foster communications. This is one item that I could add to my PBWiki site.

This was a very helpful Chapter to read and followed along with additional information to enhance what was in Xu’s book which was managing Popular Culture Text.

Ida M. Rounds