Viewing: Site Updates
May 19, 2014
Site Appearance Fixed?
I think the distorted header image and menu layout was due to some sort of glitch happening with the plugin that I use for our class’ embedded Twitter feed. By deactivating it (temporarily), the appearance seems to be back to normal. (Does it look proper for you?) I hope to get the Twitter feed back up and running soon. For now, you can manually follow my updates on Twitter by searching @MossTeaches. Thanks for your patience! 🙂
Posted in Site Updates|By Jon Moss
April 10, 2014
Welcome to our new online home!
Welcome to the new online home of Room 209! I appreciate everyone’s patience as I worked to get this new site up and running, and I hope it’s worth the effort. For the most part, you’ll find most of the same features as our old site had, although things are arranged differently. In addition to the new address and the new look and feel of the site (Thanks #15 for the inspiration!), there are some new features you might find useful:
- Mobile optimization – MossTeaches has a responsive design, meaning that it will look as clear on a small phone as it will on a large desktop monitor!
- Twitter feed – On the right sidebar of the main page of our class website, you’ll find a new Twitter feed for our classroom. I find that most of my website posts cover larger topics. My plan for the Twitter feed is to most mini-updates about what we’re doing at different times during the school day. This is a pilot test, and I may or may not continue to offer this feature, depending on how things go.
- Dear Humphrey – Think of it as a “Dear Abby” option for our classroom. Kids are welcome to write to me (anonymously, if they choose) about challenges that they’re having in school that I can help with. Often, one student is not alone in having a problem, and it’s something that be discussed during Morning Meeting.
- Virtual Classroom – This is still very much a work-in-progress. Eventually, this page will be a launchpad for many of our class eLearning activities.
- Student News – As the name implies, students will have the opportunity to take on the role of reporter and blog about some of what we do in class. Thanks, #13, for writing our first article!
Thanks to the feedback I received on the class website survey many of you completed for me, I have more planned for our new site in the coming weeks and months. As you use the new website, please message me if you find any bugs or errors, or if you want to share feedback with me! I hope you enjoy MossTeaches: the new online home for Room 209!
Posted in Site Updates|By Jon Moss
December 16, 2013
Back up!
Our class website is back up and running after about five days of being down for maintenance. It looks the same right now, but there are some under-the-hood upgrades that should improve site reliability and functionality, and they will set the groundwork for a site redesign that I hope you begin (and maybe finish) over the winter break. Stay tuned for a survey that will ask for your thoughts on features and elements that you would and would not like to see. Thanks for your patience during the down-time!
Posted in Site Updates|By Jon Moss
September 18, 2009
Comments temporarily disabled
It seems that my comments feature is vulnerable to automated bots that are posting ads for various products. Until I can iron this out, I’ve disabled your ability to anonymously post comments (without being a registered user). If you have a comment that you want to post, please email me and I’ll give you access. I’ll let you know when things are back to normal.
Posted in Site Updates|By Jon Moss
August 1, 2009
Out with the old, in with the new!
The old EDvantaged.com Class Blog site
When I started teaching third grade at PGS five years ago, we used a website called Schoolnotes to give teachers a homepage. The site worked well for a while, but I found that it had a tendency to be unstable and to lose information. In April of 2005, I worked with a friend of mine (who is a web developer) to create EDvantaged.com. I hoped that, in addition to being the home of our new class site, EDvantaged would grow to be a site that would give educational technology resources for teachers and supportive materials and ideas for parents. Unfortunately, teaching really is a full-time job, and I have never really had time to develop the other elements of the site besides the class blog. A blog is a website that allows a person (or a group of people) to post periodic messages about any topic under the sun. There are blogs about cuisine, travel, science, and (of course) politics. The nice thing about blogs is that anyone can be a blogger about any topic, and some of the most obscure topics have developed the greatest followings on the internet.
Blogs are particularly good for classroom teachers like be, because they allow me to post regular updates about class news, activities, and assignments. The chronological ordering of blog posts provides a logical organization to the site’s structure. The Room 201 Class Blog was the online home of my third grade class for a little more than four years. Although moving to fourth grade gave me a good opportunity to build a new blog site, the change was long overdue. I found that the blog’s framework software, called LifeType, which was once at the forefront of blog administration, had become dated and clumsy to use when compared to newer frameworks (such as WordPress, which this site runs off). It also didn’t allow me to format the posts as easily as I wanted, which made posting updates a longer and more difficult process for me. Most notably, however, LifeType had security weaknesses that allowed for the possibility of the site being compomised – something that’s unacceptable when the content of the site is, among other things, for kids and about kids.
This new blog site uses the most modern blogging software available and has robust security safeguards. Here are some of the features of the new site that are either active now or soon to be active:
- Users need to be registered with accounts in order to post comments.
- Sensitive information will be restricted so that only registered and approved users can access it. (Coming soon!)
- Key content areas have been given special pages (see the top of the sidebar on the left side of the page).
- We now have a counter that shows how much money has been donated to Gifts of Love as part of our Room 209 C.A.R.E.S. program.
- Homework assignments and spelling words will be posted on the website. (Note: This is a pilot test to see whether students and parents find this to be helpful. Please give me feedback as the year progresses!)
- Users can setup RSS feeds in order to automatically deliver site updates to their web browsers. (Not sure what RSS is? Click here.)
- The search feature (top right of the site) is more effective than the search on the old site. (…hopefully!)
- Posts can be better organized into categories and sub-categories.
- Links for students and parents are better structured than on the old site. (Coming soon!)
- The new site looks more mature and visually-appealing, I think. (I didn’t design the color scheme or exact layout of the site, but I’d love feedback anyway!)
Finally, please consider using Mozilla Firefox to view this website. There are some nice formatting elements that are improperly shown or totally missing when the site is accessed with Internet Explorer or Google Chrome. (The problem lies with Internet Explorer’s inability to understand some forms of modern coding that are generally accepted by the web design community.) Besides being able to show the site the way it’s intended, Firefox is a great browser on its own!
Posted in Site Updates|By Jon Moss