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Background:
Over the past four years, I have felt like I did not have enough contact with the parents of my students. I teach music, art, drama, and dance to all students grades kindergarten through fifth. This equals about 380 students. I see each class twice every six school days. I also direct a 4th/5th grade chorus. The parents of the chorus students are the ones with whom I communicate the most: rehearsal times, costumes, and other information needed to prepare for the show. I have tried sending home a newsletter in the past, but I did not feel that that particular newsletter was successful. I wanted to create an accessible, easy-to-navigate online newsletter that any interested parent and/or student could read to find out what we had been doing in their child's fine arts class.Goals:
The goals of my project are extremely straight-forward:
1. Create an accessible website that describes the lessons and activities currently being done in each grade levels' fine arts class.
2. Provide pictures of artwork done by the students (I don't have any access to this currently, but I will add it once school begins again.)
3. Display pictures from our performances (we do five performances each year - a k/1 show, a 2/3 show, a 4/5 show, and two chorus performances.).
4. Provide links to the artist and composers of the month. These activities are extra-credit, but I thought that putting them online might make some students who haven't been interested take a look at the information!Project Summary:
Overall, I feel that the project went very well. I had some technical trouble - mainly because I didn't really know what I was doing! Using Netscape Composer was a first for me, so I experimented and tried to decide what worked, what I liked and didn't like, how to make the layout easy to navigate and pleasing to the eye, etc. I'm beginning to figure some things out, but I've still got a lot to learn!
I do feel that my project will meet my goals. If all goes as planned, the site should be easy for a parent or a student to navigate. I developed a newsletter for May 2001 as an example. I included information about the activities and performances during this past May on each grade level page . I don't have access to samples of student work, but I will include those once school begins again in the fall.Conclusion:
After fumbling and experimenting, I finally feel like I have completed my project. While I do think that my project will accomplish my goals, only time will tell. I will need to reevaluate the site after parents and students have used it and offered feedback.