Scott County 9th Grade General Science Blog

Mission

Our School's mission is to "Build a Tradition of Excellence."
As a science department we have strived to create a curriculum that encomapsses all student abilities. With the implementation of a web site I feel we will be able to create a "home" for teacher/student/parent communication, a resource for teachers to access common lessons as well as Labs and assements, and finally a place where classrooms will be able to access their curriulum.

Support

Communication:

1. Right now parents have the ability to access grades on infinite campus but they can only see things that have already happened. Many parents complain that if they "only knew ahead of time", or what is tests or quizzes are "coming up."
2. Whith the advancement in technology many students have the ability to be online. With a working web site I will be able to post assignments. Students will be able to download worksheets and missing assignments. The site will also allow teachers to adapt lessons to reach more learners. So much of the class time is spent teaching the middle of the road when their are kids that need more lesson but we have no time. They could access the site for enhancements.
3. Oganization: the web site will allow parents and teachers to see the up coming assignments and lessons so that they can plan ahead of time.

Resource:

1. The web site would be a great place for my colleagues and myself to post lessons and labs that we are doing in class so that we all have the potential to access more plans. Right now we have email which works but sometimes it can be time consuming. A web site would serve two purposes we would be posting for our students to see but also for our colleagues to see as a resource. Besides we get so many emails on a dailey basis that one for a colleague can get lost in the shuffle. Not to mention emails get deleted and our web site would have the info incase they get deleted.
2. We go to the Clark County High School web site so many times to look for open response questions. Why do we do this? becasue they have done what we have failed to do. Put all our info into one place, a web site.

Curriculum

1. We have created a curriulum map for science grades 6 through 12. However, no one has access to it. We have spent a year trying to put this together but for some reason no one has seen a final copy of it. We meet once a month on this very topic but I still have not witnessed the fruits of this labor. A a department we could get head start on the whole district by placing our information on a web site that can be accessed by other science teachers in the district.
2. Not to mention it is a goal of our district to produce something that is universal in design, with all students in mind. A web site for our science department would be a great start in the right direction for our district.

Goals

1. Universal Design

2. Easy to use

Primary Audience

My primary audience will be my parents and students. Latter I hope to gain the support of my colleagues and add their classes to the site so that our school is using the site. My last audience will be the other science teachers in our district.

Think or Do (under constuction)

Taking my my classes into consideration, I want them to be able to access the site first and post a comment to a question. As I gain more experience with the site I will ask more of my students. i.e. posting assignments, using a calendar, communicating grades and results.

I have more questions but right now I am out of answers. Stay tuned for updates on my future online classroom.....