Visit Wellsville Middle School Physical Education Site

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Reviewed Site: http://www.wellsville.wnyric.org/education/staff/staff.php?sectionid=13672

Site Content Area: Physical Education Teacher's School site

Introduction:

As I write this review, I am glued to the television, watching to see if we will be hit hard from the tsunami coming our way, or if it will pass us by without creating havoc throughout the islands.  It is a little ire out, that very stillness that creeps you out, wondering what is to happen.  Everyone is heeding the warnings; stores are closed; roads are closed; classes are cancelled; it is like a ghost town.  The tides are ebbing and flowing; the reefs and rocks appearing then disappearing from sight; the water is churning heavily, thrusting the bottom to the top, creating what we call brown-water-not a good sign.  Folks evacuating for higher ground, hoping that they will make it to safety in time.  And we sit, and wait, and watch, and wait.  What else is there to do besides fretting over something I have no control over, oh yes, I'll get that website review written... 

This review will be a tad different than the others since this one focuses on a teacher's website.  Marc Agnello demonstrates most of the components an educator would want on a site for their students, parents, administrators, colleagues, community members, and stakeholders.  Using Marc's website as a template for the necessary components would serve you well, although there are still more details needed, and you would want to customize the site for your own particular situation.

Site Requirements/Access & Overview to Building Your Own Site:

To begin a website of your own you have choices in which to get it built.   You can: pay someone to build it for you; use the school's development technology; use one of several website builders; take a class to learn to hand-code correctly; have your students build the site; ask another teacher to build it; or stumble through on your own.  Whichever path you choose be sure to follow the accepted website standards, coding protocol, and meet the accessibility requirements.  Standard HTML coding is straightforward, cross-platform and cross-browser friendly, with the majority of folks being able to access the site quickly and efficiently.  Using Tables is controversial, but still acceptable.  Stay away from using frames, many people cannot access sites that utilize frames.  Flash sites are very cool, but consider your visitors, do they all have high-speed internet with the latest technology on their computers, or are they accessing the internet via dial-up or DSL; do they have older computers?  If your visitors fall within this category, they will not be too pleased trying to access your site.  They will either complain that it takes forever to load or they will just leave altogether.  Don't spend your time or money building a Flash site that no one can access!  Buttons were really popular awhile back but take extra time to load.  Image-rich sites can be a hassle with loading time, not to say you should not have images, but be cautious of how many and the size.  If the image is going to appear in a small box, than size it to those dimensions, rather than loading a 3000 pixel image.  CS4/CSS4 is the newest wave in website design with many books to support learning it.  There is PHP, JavaScript, and JQuery to help pull pages together seamlessly, along with Cascading Style Sheets to keep your site looking and feeling the same throughout each page.  There are a hundred different ways to get the results that you want so when you start your project, keep your visitors in mind while you build your site.

Navigation:

Marc's navigation is on the left side, with direct links to his other pages.  This is a good place for your navigation since most people are accustomed to locating navigation there or on the top.  His navigation does run at least two pages down and possibly he could have grouped a few items together, making it shorter to scroll.  Be sure to rank the importance of each of your links with the more important links towards the top and the least important towards the bottom.  Now I know what you are thinking, they are all important, but in reality, they are not.  Do you want the students and parents to know the expectations, grading policy, and philosophy, or is your field day information a top priority?

The Look:

This site has the blinding white background with the banner and navigation in bright red.  There is a gold stripe on the outside of the navigation and the font is white.  The font is clearly readable both in the navigation and on the page content.  I did find some of the links on the content pages difficult to locate since there were no indicators, such as a change in color, underlining, or text stating it was a link.  The other item I would caution, is using the carrot symbol on a page to point to particular text.  When a designer sees that, we wonder if there is an error on the page since that symbol is used solely for coding.  If you want to point to something, there are many different ways to do that without using coding symbols.  We have good intentions when designing a site, but don't always get to every page.  This leads us to use the "under construction" option so we can have the page in place.  It would be much better to leave that page out until it is developed, however if you really want it to appear in the line-up, at least write a description of what will be appearing on the page.  Consider your visitors, will they open documents you have loaded on your site; are they using public computers where this option may be shut off?  It is always better to have that information on the page itself with a PDF download option.  Lastly, the same rules apply on websites as they do on emails or text messages: all caps mean yelling or shouting, plus are hard to read.

Features of the Site:

Below is the list of features Marc has on his site along with my input, for what's it worth.
What are we doing in PE?  This could be incorporated within the Class Calendar; nice to see the last update listed.

WMS PE in the news.  You could use this page to either copy the articles or give brief descriptions with the links to the actual articles.

1st Annual WMS Strongman/Skills Competition.  This is used for field day event information, or other special events you offer at your school.

NYS AHPERD 2009.  I was expecting this to link to the State website, but it listed his PowerPoint Presentation for other educators to download.  When using this type of title be sure it goes to where folks think it will take them.

Podcasts.  What kind of podcasts?  Ones the students have created or links to ones you want your students to check out?  Be specific.

Philosophy.  This is a high priority link, be sure it is close to the top and your are 100% thorough when posting this information; parents and students will hold you to it.

PE Expectations.  Again, another high priority link.  These should be written right on the content page, but if you want to offer a downloadable version, be sure to use PDF formatting.

Rules and Grading Policy.  Do I even need to say anything about this link?  I did like Marc's last statement and I'm sure he wouldn't mind if you borrowed it:  "...it is important that the student only be excused from specific activities that may bother the illness or injury.  In an effort to keep students as active as possible, the parent/guardian or doctor should note what the student is still capable of doing during physical education class".

Mr. Agnello's Review Sheets.  This link can be titled without the teacher's name and may include many documents besides just the latest review sheet.  It might even be a good idea to keep all your documents up for students to access any time throughout the year.  You can even archive your documents to make searching quicker.

Wellsville PE Standards.  I like that Marc listed all the standards, in full, on this page, making them easily accessible to everyone.  I would write them in regular font rather than all caps.  To me, this is a high priority link, but maybe to others it is not as important~a decision you will have to make yourself.

NY State PE Learning Standards.  Again, I was expecting this to take me to the State site, but was glad to see the standards right there on the page.  Be sure to include a link to the original site in case folks want to read further information.

NASPE Standards.  Although I would encourage you to use this title to take folks to the actual page, the option of listing them right on the page is doable, but please do include a link to the original site.  It is easier for folks to read in list format rather than paragraph format.

Messages from the PE Department.  Although I enjoyed the quotes they had listed here, I would assume most parents would access that page looking for specific announcements about the class; possibly a new rule change, field trip, safety reminder, upcoming event, homework/project due date, exam schedule, that kind of thing.  If you want to incorporate quotes, you can use a simple JavaScript to have it run on the top of your page and change on every refresh. 

Physical Education Blog.  Have you read the latest news on blogs?  The experts say it is dead; folks are using Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking venues rather than blogging.  With that being said, blogging is still very active in the virtual learning environment.  If you are going to use it as a means for students to interact with one another on teacher-selected topics; for students to respond to questions related to the content you are covering in class; as a way for students to do peer reviews of papers or projects; or as a means to interact with the students, the go for it, it can be an excellent tool!

Opinion Poll.  Do you want your students and parents weighing in on a hot topic?  Than this is the ticket for you.

Homework Assignments.  I would use a more general title such as assignments and projects, rather than homework.  You know how students are; they will say they couldn't find the project assignment on-line because you did not have a link to it.

Heart Rate Calculator; My Food Pyramid; Body Mass Index should all be links on one page rather than their own links on the main navigation of your site. 

Community Resources.  Unless you want to constantly monitor all these resources, it would be better to use this as a page to collect links to the resources available in your community.  This way when the parent or student is looking for an activity, it will take them directly to the community resource's page, where their information should be updated.

Intramurals.  If your school offers this program than great, list it.  If you are not the one responsible for this program, be sure to point the students to the person who is responsible.  You could include the rules of the program, expectations, extra credit opportunities, game schedule, and any other inspirational content to get your students involved.

Scrapbook.  This is the same as a photo gallery.  Be sure you have written permission from every student who appears in the pictures.  Only use first names, especially if you teach younger students.  I recommend that you find a photo gallery server to upload your pictures, thereby saving as much of your sever space as possible.  Grouping them by grade level, semester, class, period, homeroom class, or activity makes it easier to search and find what one is looking for and easier for you to manage.  When I used a photo gallery, I left the students pictures up there forever~they got a kick out of going back and looking at them years later. 

Classroom Calendar.  This should only have a classroom calendar listed, not the school calendar or an athletic team calendar; there are other titles for those.  If you do not want to build your own calendar and keep it up-to-date, consider using Google Calendar or something similar.

Contact Form.  This server-based form is a great option, especially for folks using public computers since the email program will be disabled.  Please do list your contact information as well as an email link.

Last Page of the Internet.  I thought this was clever; a good way to get students off their behinds and up and moving.

Marc's site is a good place to go to get an idea about what to include on your site.  Take notes, keep track of what you like and don't like, and visit other educator's sites in comparison.  Once you do this, start developing your site by hand-sketching the lay-out, listing all your links and pages, and gather all supporting documents.  When you've got everything together, consider your building options, make a decision, and then jump in to your project.  You'll be ecstatic once you get your site up and running.  Be sure to submit your URL to PECentral so it can be listed under the educator's sites.

I'm sure you're wondering if we survived, OK, maybe not since you are at the end of this review, but you may wonder what happened over here on our small little island.  At the end of this review, we were still not given the all clear; still asked to stay put and not go about our regular business; to sit and wait for a tad longer, just to make sure all is well with Mother Nature.  We have another 10 hours to go before they can say definitely that the tsunami is passing us, but the signs are looking good! 
As always, happy surfing!