As a part of our district policy I created a Health and PE web-site through schoolwires and now we currently use on-course. The web-site was designed to facilitate communication with students, parents and administration. I was able to post my schedule, assignments, expectations, curriculum and activities, calendar of special events, and grading policies. It has been very useful not only for students but for the parents as well. They are able to look up our schedule, and keep themselves well informed of what is expected of their children in my class as well as what they are currently doing. It also directly links parents to me if they need to contact me immediately they are able to email me from the webpage.

Have you ever created a Webpage? If so, what was its purpose? What are some ways that a Website you create and maintain might be useful in your work?

I have never created a webpage. Creating a webpage could keep parents up-to-date on what their child is doing in physical education class as well as homework suggestions to improve their kid's performance. This year we have switched to an ABCD rotating schedule as opposed to a Monday through Friday schedule and it is hard for the students to remember when they have P.E. My website could help the parents and students track what day they need to dress appropriately for class. I could also use my webpage to inform parents of game and practice schedules for football, basketball, volleyball, and track. If we need to cancel practice, and it is on our webpage, the parents will not have to rely on their child to relay the message about a practice cancellation.

I've never created a web page but have often thought about it. I think that it would be beneficial and a great way to keep my students motivated. On it would be information about what we're currently doing in physical education and what's on tap for the coming week. I'd also include links to other health and P.E. sites tht would be appropriate for my students. I always thought a snack of the week would be helpful as well. I've never created a web page because I've never been a computer guy. I know how to do the basics but anything past that isn't second nature although I have to see this course has raised my confidence.

Creating a web page is easier than you think -- even if you don't think you are a computer person. It can also be fun and you can have the students help you, which is really fun for them. It can just be basic in the beginning and the more you learn, the more you can add!

Yes I created a webpage.The purpose is informational, communication tool for parents and people in the community.

Do you have time to update the page, or is it like mine, just out in cyberspace somewhere?!

I have created a webpage as part of our back to school in service. It was very basic, explaining the rules, regulations, and grading procedures for the class. I have not updated it since it's inception. I move from my office to the gym and just can't seem to make that page a priority right now.

I have created a webpage for my classroom. I change the webpage monthly updating information about our class. Each month I post units we are working on in our classes for each grade level. I also post upcoming tests or assignments, our grading policy, our contact information, and a bio on my education and work history. I also post different hyperlinks to websites that we are using with our lesson or that I think the students would find enjoyable.

I have found this to be helpful because parents and students can get information about our class anytime they want. It has elevateed a lot of parent phone calls or emails about my grading policy and assignments. Or I can always refer parents back to my webpage to find those answers. It is also nice for parents and students to see pictures or videos of certain classroom lessons.

After reading this question I chuckled. I just contacted a co-worker about this. I was off-site at a state pe. conference when our district had this as a professional development day. I am in the beginning stages of creating one with that co-worker. I can only hope that once it is created that my students will access it on a regular basis. It can keep them up to date as to what is going on throughout the department as well as my class. It also will give me the opportunity to connect with my athletes as well. Practice agendas and other information that can be posted for them to see that can increase their knowledge about the sport or game.

Yes, I have created a web page. It is a pretty basic one for school. I put up the lessons that I am working on with the students so the parents can view it. I think this is very useful. The really involved parents like to see what is going on in the classroom and what their child is working on. Creating and maintaining a site is useful in that I can load my lessons on to there and it is another place to save them and it is a great way for the parents and administrators to keep in touch with what I am doing. It is also a great way for the kids to see what they will be learning and be able to be prepared for class.

For our district, all teachers are required to create, update and maintain a webpage. The webpage is supposed to be for students and parents to find information, get to know the teacher, standards, expectations, etc. Having a webpage is very helpful and I recommend it for any teacher. I post schedules for my teams, after school activities, curriculum schedule, I post our letter to students and parents, interesting information, community sports opportunities, my email and contact information, etc. A webpage is a very handy tool to have open communication with parents and teachers without needing to meet for a conference. It is an easy way to present information to large numbers of people without giving numerous take-home sheets to students.

Yes, I created a webpage with the acronym F.L.A.S.H. for "Fitness and Lifelong Activity Starts Here. It was an icon tab on our school website and designed to inform the parents, students and community about the "happenings" in the health and physical education department. It also served the purpose of a resource for healthy lifestyle choices, fitness informational tidbits and featured one of our grade levels each month. There were also "family fun" activities listed and "healthy snack alternatives" for post game munching. it was updated about every month with new info...sometimes there was even research articles about the importance of daily activity and statistics on obesity and health consequences for being overweight, incouraging 60 minutes of play everyday, etc. I haven't really used this website lately, because now there are so many other resources available with this same information, I didn't feel it was being used to its fullest and it was a lot of time and work to keep it up dated like I wanted to.

I am currently in the process of revamping the website to be more of a communication between students and teachers. I would like to use Google Docs as an option for testing, scheduling, calendars, getting feedback, surveys, etc.

Our school has a broader physical education/academic website: www.kidsmovesmart.org. Which is another reason the focus of my original website will/has changed.

The only webpage that I have created to this point in my career is one that is a link from our district's website. It allows teachers to detail their educational background and experience. The site also inlcudes information about the classes that I teach as well as student requirements.

In the very neat future, I plan to update my webpage with links that can be accessed by students and parents where they can access health and physical activity information that they may find useful.

Teachers who teach secondary courses may find it useful to post assignments on their webpages as well.

Yes, Chris links are essential. From experience the people who view a teachers webpage always love links to information. I put on mine a link to the American Red Cross website, Jump rope for Heart and several other health/fitness sites. Add links that will help you in class as well. If you are doing a fitness unit put up a link that has information about Heart Rate Monitors.

yes, our school requires teachers to have a website on the school's main website. Our school's webiste/program is called "schoolwires." This program is actually very easy to use because everything is already preset so one just has to input their information and the front page of the website is created. We have our own webpage for all the PE staff. We decided this would be the best so that we are all consistent with the information. On our webpage, we have grading information for all grade levels (6th, 7th, 8th), notes provided to all grade levels,weekly schedule, due dates (tests, projects), contact information, and a survey (given at the beginning of the year)parents provide us with current contact information. The webpage is really helpful for students for example, when they are absent they know what they missed. We constantly remind the students of the webpage so that they become familiar with it. At first it was really difficult to update information, but once you get use to it, it benefits both student and teacher.

I have created a Webpage. About 5 years ago I received an email on creating a Webpage for football programs. The service created an easy way for us to make our own Webpage. They set up a format that allowed us to type messages, put up our schedule for the entire season, upload pictures, upload video, create a roster, give directions to away games and much more. We had to maintain the site on monthly bases to ensure the information was current. It was actually a much simpler task then I thought it would be.

In my district each teacher is given a Teachers Page. The page is set up for us to be able to place assignments, give updates on special events, upload pictures, etc. The best thing about the Teachers Pages is that they are flexible in the design of the page. When you want to add to the page it is a matter of selecting the type of page that fits your needs best and then making that page active. You can also make a page inactive but that work won’t be lost. The program will save it for you for future use. The maintenance of your Teachers Page is critical. The students will use the page as a reference especially at the beginning of a new marking period or unit.

Actually, I have not had the opportunity to make a webpage yet. Ok...I have had plenty of opportunities to make one, but no idea where I would start. I know our district has a page linked to us as a contact, but I am not sure what to do with it. I would however love to create and update a webpage on a regular basis. For my pe classes, this would be a perfect way to reinforce all of the quidelines and requirements for my classes, as well as our entire department. Additionally, I would also like to create one for my players to be able to see all expectations, practices, meetings, and matches. Not to mention parents would be able to double check what, where, when, why, and how their children/athletes are expected to be doing.

I do have my own webpage. My main two reasons for creating a webpage was to give my students and their parents a place where they could locate our rules and regulations sheet, as well as an easy place where they could access their grades using the esis system.

It also ended up being a neat place where I could show the students some personal facts about me, such as where I grew up, went to college, etc. In addition to the above information I have added schedules for when we switch our units, as well as a schedule on when we change our weight lifting program in my weights classes. I feel that this a great way for students and parents to be able to get information on your program at their convenience.

Yes, the first website I designed was in graduate school. Back then we looked at writing our own html and while it was interesting it was time consuming, especially since I didn't fully understand the language. Since then I have developed a couple simple sites that I used for my classes and also one for a 5k race I organize. Nothing special, just a way to get race info out there: https://sites.google.com/site/peopleunited5k/home

I am now working with our school IT person to develop a "flashy" website for the entire PE department (3 classes grades 6-10)that will hopefully include a message board and storage for assignments.

I haven’t created a webpage from scratch but I do have one the school provides for us that I have designed and maintain. We use it to post homework for our classes and information about our classes for students and parents. I also use my webpage to post information about my softball team, schedule, stats and scores. This makes it easy to communicate with my players and parents.

I have never actually created a webpage to date. Early in the school year we had an inservice that required us to set up a Calendar online, but I never ever took it any further. Although I think it is a great tool for the classroom teacher, I just don't seem to ever have the time toset one up for my students.
In the future, probably shortly after I finish this class and realize how easy and beneficial it really is, I will do so. I would love to set up a page for our PE / Health department, and for my own classes as well. I could put homework assignments, upcoming topics, and links to reliable websites that pertain to my teaching assignment. I could also post things such as grading guidelines, class rules, expectations and video and pictures of our students participating in the various activities that we teach throughout the year.
basically anything that we can do to promote our program would be beneficial to us in these difficult financial times when more and more programs are being cut and or downsized.

Al,

I too felt a little overwhelmed by the time investment and extra learning required to build a website. I was pleasantly surprised that our school district adopted a very simply website building application: School Loop. It was very easy to use and had most of the website already complete with the exception of personal information and class announcements.

My first website for PE required many, many hours of work, and after completing it, the district switched to school loop, so I lost all the hard work I put into building that first website.

Not to worry, School Loop is super easy and super simple to use now. I hope you can find a user-friendly web building application to suite your needs!

Dirk

I created a website for Parklane Elementary School in Stockton, CA three years ago.

There were several purposes for creating the Website:

1. Post a letter of introduction to the parents.
2. Post a list of rules and consequences.
3. Post an article describing the importance of PE
4. Post contact information so the parents could contact me.
5. Post pictures of the new rock wall we installed.

This website was very useful in my work.

The website provided a clear summary of our PE program and the importance of maintaining an active lifestyle.

The website provided a way for the parents to stay in contact with me.

The website also provided a calendar of special events [Field Day, School wide Dance, etc.].

The School District provided a website building class that enabled me to develop and implement the website.

I have created a web page for my weight training class. I actually did it for for part of another class but I'm glad I did. I post workouts on it as well as class video and pictures. Students can access their grades and see whats coming up.

Have you ever created a Webpage? If so, what was its purpose?
-No, I have never created a webpage. Our district website allows for teachers to create their own pages but I have no idea how to go about it.

What are some ways that a Website you create and maintain might be useful in your work?
-I would like to put safety issues, student expectations, curriculum info on the webpage so students & parents can get a better idea of what's expected as well as all the things that go on during the year. I am worried about how much of my time would
be spent update the site though. It would be great to post pictures and videos of my students on the page or protected links at least.

I have created a webpage for school before. The tech man at our school downloaded PowPak from the internet which makes it very easy to create and work with your own web page. I only wish I had more time to work with it during the school year because I did not keep up with it this past school year. I am hoping to be able to start updating it again this school year. The purpose of the web page was to let parents know what we are doing in Physical Education class and to give them the opportunities to go to various web pages to upate thmselves on the aspects of Physical Eduation. I also like using the web page to have a calendar on it so the parent knows if their child has Physical Education that day. I also have links on the site for students to go to and sign in and keep track of their steps that they take throughout their school year. The options are of what you can do with the webpage is only limited to your imagination and time you have to put into the page.

I created my own webpage through our school server. One of the nicest things about this webpage is posting the curriculum and planning throughout the year. The parents and scudents can look at it and see what we will be doing throughout the year. I also plan a ski trip for grades 6, 7, and 8. The permission slips are on the website so I can let students know and they can print them off at home if they misplace them, which happens often. I also put pictures on the website. I have had parents comment on them when they are new to the district and compliment me. They enjoy knowing what the students will learn and the pictures show the good times the students have.

I created a webpage about 10 years ago. The school district I taught in wanted all of the teachers to have a webpage. It was very basic; it included my schedule, how to contact me, and information about my classes. I think my past webpage was useful and still would be. I could post important information for students and their families about class information as well as include articles and resources for leading a healthy lifestyle.

Have you ever created a Webpage? If so, what was its purpose? What are some ways that a Website you create and maintain might be useful in your work?

I made a webpage for my Science class. I started it in 2002.This is my first year teaching PE so I am just now starting that. It is very useful. I post all my notes, assignments, student's work, study help materials. I have over 109926 hits. http://www.orange.k12.oh.us/teachers/ohs/jsangdahl/APESWEB/index.html

I have a website for my wrestling team (https://sites.google.com/site/201112sburgjrhighwrestling/). I started one last year to use mainly as a way to post announcements to wrestlers (or their parents), and cancel practices or matches on snow days without having to make a ton of phone calls or worry about a phone chain breaking down some where! It has served me well. I just need to find wrestling managers that can help me keep it updated more than I do! But I know I will continue to use it each year.
I also would like to use a webpage for a scavenger hunt for class.

The hardest part is maintaining a website. For my basketball team this year, one of my players started a team Facebook page and updates it every night with practice/game schedules and other related information. I don't have/want access to it but so far everyone always knows where to be and what to wear.

I was the Athletic Director for my high school for 2 years and I created a sports website for our school. Each team had a webpage with game schedules and results. I uploaded coaches practice schedules as necessary. I had a Forms page with all the required forms each season, i.e. Medical Power of Attorney, Sports Physicals, Athletic Code & Policy, etc.

It was useful for coaches, athletes, students, faculty, and parents so they could stay up to date on the latest information.

I have a webpage for my school's website that I, at best, maintain. It is a required page that contains contact information and office hours. It has the potential to house a lot more. I would like to make it a key place for parents and kids to look for information. I want to include links to important websites, tips for how to improve motor skills at home, schedules of our units in class, and opportunites for children to pursue athletics and physical activity outside school.

What a great idea to include hours on your webpage. I do have the basic information that we go over for our health and physical education classrooms broken down by grade, but the hours might be a nice thing to add.I too would like to include more links, but I do keep reminding myself Rome wasn't built in a day and it will surely but slowly come together. Though I'm sure as we keep making advancements in technology I'll be changing this constantly. (haha)

Hi Andrea,

I'm in the process of creating a website. How often do you maintain your website? I know some teachers have a difficult time updating their website. I like your idea of helpful information for parents and tips to improve skills at home. For example: tips for healthy eating or tips for staying active as a family. I'm hoping my website is a tool for parents and students to be used as an extension of the physical education classroom.

I have not created a Web page. I need to check with my tech department to find out if our district hosts a web page I can maintain. I have not seen other teachers in our district maintain web pages. Of course, they may have sites hosted on other servers other than the district website. I have been contemplating this for years but have never taken the time to find out how to start a website or design it. I think a website can be a valuable tool in keeping families informed on what’s happening in their child’s Physical Education class. I would like to be able to make it exciting to warrant my students visiting the site. I am hoping with this class I can get a little more insight into what is required to develop a web page. I am a little leery of putting pictures of students out on the web because of privacy issues. I know you can get permission from parents but I am still concerned of privacy issues when posting information about students. I would really like an opportunity to develop a web site and see what it can do for my program.

I created a webpage last year at my old school. I was able to put a link to the page onto Infinite Campus - Our grading system - which was nice because the when the parents or students checked their grades they could click over to the web page. I use google for my page. I would post our daily activities and access to our monthly events.

I would also post the students mile times by student number, kids thought that was cool because I had them broken down by class but also ranked for the entire school by male and female.

On the home page I also posted our morning family workout schedule.

I have created a website for our P.E. program. It is www.esperanzape.weebly.com. It is a free website from weebly.com. It is super user friendly to create if you know basic computing. I was able to create a main page with information about our P.E. and Health program. I created sub pages for each teacher in our program where they could post things specific to their instruction. You can just click and drag things like text boxes, pictures, designs, links, etc. and they go right on to the website and then you click publish. It is a great way to allow students to access the program from home. If a student needs make up work for being absent, they can go to the site, download an assignment, complete it and email it to the teacher in no time. Students and parents can find out what we do in physical education and health. There are links to their grades, our email and school information for them. The purpose of this website is to familiarize the community about our program and allow parents and students to access what they need to be successful in Physical Education. The website is very beneficial because it answers a lot of questions students and parents might have throughout the school year.

Hi William,

Thank you for recommending weebly.com. I had intentions of getting together with our technology department and creating a website when I got back to school. I am going to play around with this site and see if I can get something up and running for the beginning of the school year. Have you had any feedback from students and/or parents? Thanks again...Laura

I have not yet created a Webpage. I am interested in doing so soon with help from the technology department at school. It would be useful in that the Webpage would consist of syllabus for the year, images on what is being done in PE, goals and vision for the PE program, state standards, electives that will be taught, classroom rules, grading procedure. I would also like to add Podcasts to the site. I would use it to announce upcoming events, updates on the current trends for fitness, and topics in the news related to health and wellness that could spark a brief discussion with the class. This would be an additional source of communication with students and parents.

I have semi created a webpage (actually a few). One was for a class back in college. It was very bare bones and I do not remember much of how I did it. Our school district has, through school fusion, the ability to have each teacher have their own page. It is very simple to use and you can create sub pages for your different classes and post homework and connect with the kids through it. I worked with that one, but there are feature that do not make sense to me. Some of it is really difficult, where other things seem outdated.

I think that creating and maintaining a website is a great deal of work, however, if you keep up with it, it will not seem so overwhelming. Having class websites can be useful for a variety of reasons. You can post small video clips of games or skills you are working on. Students can check to see what is going on, what was done in class if they missed, and review information covered in class. As the teacher, you can post updates, notes, rules, and even post pictures of the students in action. Once you start putting these up, students will be more likely to go onto the site to check to see if they are on it. The one thing you have to be careful of is if they are cleared by their parents to be put on a site.

Many years ago our district started using LEAP (Learning Environment for Academic Progress). It enables our teachers to build interactive websites containing quizzes, surveys, class rules, etc. At the time, we were required to build a website and maintain it throughout the year. On my site, I included my class rules/expectations, rewards and incentives, P.E. News and Field Day information. I was excited about it at first, but it was difficult to maintain and I eventually lost interest. Our district no longer pushes us to keep up the site and, until recently, I had forgotten about it entirely.

I believe the problem began when I first started using LEAP and noticed that I wasn't getting many parents viewing the site. I felt like I was doing all this work and it was going unnoticed. However, things have changed in my district. Now, our school newsletter is electronic, many more parents have email and we have online educational programs that our students access on a nightly basis. It's time to begin again with a website that includes links, surveys, fitness information and photos...not just an electronic newsletter.

I am a bit embarrassed to say that I have never created a web page! I feel this way because a web page would be a wonderfull way to keep parents and families up to date with what goes on in our Wellness department at my elementary school. Our students are involved in many great activities, lessons, and programs, and unless students share all this with their family at home, parents can't appreciate how valuable and necessary Physical Education and Health Education are! During our Wellness classes, we take pictures, videos, share skits and routines, and all these could be posted on a web page. It is also a great avenue to share current and relevant information regarding fitness and wellness to our entire community, not just the students we teach. And lastly, our school has a software program called "Schoolwires" which makes it easy to develop a page. There also is training available for developing our own web page. Our entire school uses the same web page program, so support is definitely available from other staff as well! Sounds like I just talked myself into creating a web page!

Yes! Initially my school was using a intranet format where teachers were able to create websites using Dreamweaver. I had a massive site with links, photos, videos and also had forms, assignments and other important information that students could access and download. This saved me a major hassle trying to re-print things that students had lost.

Unfortunately, my school changed formats to a Sharepoint over the summer without informing any educators and I lost all of my work because it was saved directly on the school's servers. Word of the wise, always have an image of the site saved on you home computer. You can always access the pages created and files without having it published on the web.

Sharepoint is a descent platform, but it doesn't allow the teacher much creativity. If you were to relate it to social media sites, the intranet was more like Myspace where, if you had html knowledge, could be as creative as you wanted, and Sharepoint is relative to Facebook where you can have all the same information (mostly) but lacks any form of creativity because all of the sites are the same format.

A few years ago I was required to create a web page along with all the teachers in my district. I found it interesting but it seemed like another thing to keep me sitting instead of moving and I did not feel a need to keep working on it so I have let it go. I know it is a good way to communicate with the students and parents of my school but I never felt like I needed to do that better. It is still available and I should revisit it. I just feel like life is already so busy that I don't want to add another thing to do if I do not need to. This discussion issue has forced me to think about how I should use this and so I am going to set as a goal to annually visit this site at the beginning of each school year to make sure it reflects what I am doing in my class.

I can see your point about wanting to spend as much time as you can doing the other things that you absolutely need to do. What about having your students help keep the webpage up to date? Perhaps they can all have usernames or passwords so that they can post things that are going on, or things that they are doing, maybe some pictures of videos.

I was thinking that picking a student or two each unit or month to contribute something to the webpage would be reasonable.

I have never created a website from scratch; however we are required to maintain a webpage through our school email server. The webpage lists the activities that we will cover throughout the year in class and some background information about me. Each teacher in school must follow the same outline so there are very little differences between each staff member’s webpage. The webpage that we create are text only and look very bland but additional data and graphics take too long to load so I limit the amount I put on the page. I also have a section that links useful health and physical education to my page so parents can find more about how their child can lead a healthy life. A webpage is a great tool to share information and keep parents and children up to date with what is going on in class. If students have assignments that need to be completed they can find the information on the site and if there are deadlines to follow the student can be accountable for meeting them.

I have never created a web page. I cannot describe how excited I am to make one in the near future. I have just become a head football coach so I am sure that is one of the first things that I will be doing is creating a webpage. When I do create the page, it is going to be to get our brand of football out into the public. I want people to be able to see what we are about and what we do at Santa Clara. It will also be a way for our players to get any of our information as well if they miss a meeting or lose something. It is also going to help the parents reach out to me in another medium.

I have never created a Physical Education specific webpage.

We have a school facebook page that I post pictures and video to, and another page for the girls sports teams that I coach.

A website would be a great way to document and share all of the fun things that happen during class time. It allows parents and people of the community to come into a class, without physically having to go to a class. Just like an art class, it allows the student's to display their work and achievements. It is a great way to keep everyone updated on current and upcoming events rather than having to send a paper notice home.

Having items posted such as grading rubrics, class expectations, homework assignments, etc could help parents understand what you expect from the students and what it requires to earn a good grade.

A website is also a great way to save and share special links and attachments that pertain to the class. Instead of having to email or make lots of photocopies, students can access the information themselves right from the webpage. If student's finish work early or need extra credit, projects can be created from the resources posted on the webpage.

Having a website would allow you to communicate and share ideas with other PE teachers. Our school webpage and updated very frequently, but it would be great to have a link of the school page that would bring you directly to my personal page.

I had to create a webpage years ago for my school. We were all forced to create this webpage as a means to better communicate with parents and students. In addition, I thought that it would save me time, because parents and students wouldn't have to communicate with me regarding little things, like obtaining paperwork etc. It was already all there for them, at their fingertip!

At the time it seemed like a great idea and it was for all intents and purposes. The problem was that it was very difficult to maintain and little to no time was allowed to maintain them. They quickly became outdated and most of the time students and parents would just email me for the information that they needed. Some other teachers had trouble with monitoring all the discussion boards and some students received disciplinary action due to writing inappropriate things.

A website that is easy to maintain and update would be very helpful in my work. I would love to have a place where students can access paperwork, forms, and ask questions related to the class. I would also like to have a discussion board (that is easily monitored) for students to discuss topics related to class. In addition, it would be helpful to have a section where students can preview videos that will be referred to in class. I would also like to send messages to the class to remind them of deadlines and assignments etc. Lastly, I could link my website to our district's online grade book for both students and parents to access grades and to contact me regarding any questions or concerns they have.