Journal 1

   In the article "Children's Websites: Usability Issues in Designing for Kids" by Jakob Nielsen, I learned that in the past decade the time kids spent on a computer has tripled, this is according to Kaiser Family Foundation.  Nielsen also wrote that children today are so much more experienced on computers because they are exposed at a much younger age.  Also, the goals of websites geared toward children and adults need to be different based on the needs and wants of each age group.  For example: children want sites that are more entertaining where adults want usability and communication, Secondly, children want instant gratification where adults may just have some limited patientce.  Lastly, children like animation and sound, but adults do not.   The article also stated that the main predictor of children's ability to use websites is the amount of prior expereince.  I think that as a first grade teacher this is important to realize.  I know that I have some students who do have experience at home and some that do not.  Therefore, it is important that at school we give all students experience with using computers as our society moves to using more and more technology everyday.

     The "Introduction" reading  reiterated things about classroom websites that I already new.  For example, according to the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (2011), a classroom website should introduce yourself, provide basic information about classes and develop a knowledge base of contnent.   These are the big things I looked for when I searched through my 10 websites.  I saw that some teachers did post information to parents about school and classroom procedures and posted links to content pacing guides.  About half of the blogs I saw did have pictures and short biographies of the teachers.  I learned that I need to update my classroom blog and make it more current.  I see that it may not be reasonable for my with my busy schedule to update it every week, but I think that monthly is a good goal.

     For my website, like I said, my goal is to update it monthly, this way I can still share what it happening in our room and what is up and coming, but be able to manage it as well.  I need to post more information for parents about our classroom procedures.  In addition, there are more links I can post for sites and online programs that the kids use at school that they could also use at home (i.e. Raz Kids and Moby Max).  I think I could also work with the design to make it a bit easier to read.