Making the most of your class website

I just finished reading an article out of Educational Leadership (which I stole and admitted to from my superintendent’s desk!) titled Making the Most of Your Class Website by Lemoyne S. Dunn.
The article was well written and had specific examples of what a website would look like at levels 1 – 5. So being an organized (yeah right) person, I decided to create a rubric from the levels. Essentially Level 1 just disseminates static information that probably wouldn’t change much from one year to the next. Contact information, maybe a teacher picture, class supply list, rules, etc. Level 5 was student ownership of content and could be a classroom log of what was learned.
I am guilty of letting my webpages for my classroom fall into Level 1 categories at times with static information that hasn’t been updated. I think that mostly I tend to operate in the Level 3 or 4 with my student’s online presence in many different places and not just my school webpage. We have blogs, flickr, creating google sites, threaded discussion boards, and twitter that I incorporate weekly. I would like to make it more consistent though.
I am thoroughly guilty of Level 1 webpages on most of our school’s website though and need to have a better plan about what content needs to be placed on pages and responsibilities of updating those.
If you have a chance to get your hands on a copy, I encourage you to do so. I think I will pass this along to my teachers and have them grade their own class webpages to see where they rank. Many of them will fall in the Level 1 category and I think we should be striving for at least Level 3 which encourages 2 way communication avenues.
I have written an email to the article’s author for authorization to include the rubric in this blog. If you would like to see a copy, please comment with your request and I will notify you of Lemoyne Dunn’s response when I receive it.
Update 2/8/11: I emailed Mr. Dunn last night to ask if I could include the rubric. He replied very rapidly and provided a visual that really brings things together for anyone wishing to see where they rank and what they should strive for in effective websites. Thank you Mr. Dunn for the permission to include the following.