A couple years ago, I started a simple WordPress blog to keep students and parents updated about stuff going on in my classroom.
It’s called iseroma.com. I like it.
My vision, among other things, was to post class agendas and assignments that students could use as a reference. But like many other teachers, I found out quickly how difficult it was to keep up. Invariably, no matter how much I tried, I got behind.
There were just too many steps: Do my lesson plan, retype the agenda as a post, put the assignment into the calendar, repeat the next day.
I needed something more efficient. So this year, I decided to streamline the process by linking and embedding several items from Google Apps into my blog. Here are two examples:
- My class agendas and assignments are now a linked Google Doc. When I update my lessons, the changes happen automatically on my WordPress blog. It’s so much faster now.
- My calendar is now an embedded Google Calendar. Different classes are in different colors, and it lets me show only the events I want. At the beginning of the year, I even sat down to type in all the whole-school events, which parents have appreciated.
Sure, those examples don’t sound like much, but I’m just starting. Plus, teachers know that it’s the little things that count. Anything that saves just a bit of time is something worth investigating.
The next step: Get more students and parents to go to my class website. That’s a biggie that I need to tackle this year. 