First of all, here is the template with some fake content added.
Background: This year, we are moving to “framework for teaching” developed by Charlotte Danielson in which she defines four domains that teacher assessment should consider: Planning and Preparation, Classroom Environment, Instruction, and Professional Responsibilities. Since she is doing a workshop with our supervisors on the 27th, and since I’ve been given a few minutes to present this, I’m looking for some feedback. My goal is to first, make it as simple as possible, second, make it relevant to the Danielson model, and third, to make it a valuable tool for reflection and development. As you can see, the teacher will be able to interact within the weblog with a supervisor, a peer coach or colleague, and others if he or she chooses. I see the news posts as reflections, and stories can be created as artifacts or goals or whatever. I’ve created easy edit buttons for the navigation bar (here is a screenshot of what the editing mode looks like.) I’m trying to require as little code work as possible.
What other standard links or categories might you add to this template? Any thoughts on design/look? Functionality? Any specific thoughts on what other configurations I might need to preset? Any thoughts in general?
As an aside, I find myself being drawn more and more to the teacher/professional development potentials here. Maybe it’s the trickle down approach…better teaching means better learning. But as teachers we lack any real forums for discussion, debate, or sharing outside of our close circles. Best Practice teacher portfolios published and promoted, departmental weblogs for discussion of ideas and policy, schoolwide professional weblogs to link to news and information about the teaching profession…all of those ideas really intrigue me.
—–