District highlights new school Web sites | Education | Summerville Journal Scene

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District highlights new school Web sites

Published Thursday, October 15, 2009 1:19 PM

By Michael Tannebaum
Summerville Journal Scene ®

This year, Dorchester District 2 students are able to communicate with their classmates and teachers from the comfort of their own homes.

All District 2 schools have new Web sites that benefit students, teachers and parents, explained district officials at Monday’s school board meeting. Teachers have their own Internet “classroom,” which they can use to list assignments, start discussion topics and even post audio and video content.

Michelle Arnett, an instructional technology specialist, accessed one teacher’s Web site and played a video the teacher had posted, which showed her solving a math equation while explaining the rationale behind each step. Arnett says this feature will assist students who need a brief refresher about the day’s lesson.

Last week, the district launched a feature that allows parents to create an account to access the Web sites. More than 1,000 parents have already registered, said Jeff Allen, instructional technology specialist. Allen added that he expects upwards of 9,000 parents to join.

When parents register, they can receive a daily or weekly E-mail that includes their child’s homework and upcoming events at the their child’s school. Parents with more than one child in the district only have to register once because the Web system automatically aggregates student information.

Each time students or their parents visit their respective accounts, they will see an area that shows recent activity in case a file or assignment was added since they last accessed the site.

Students are able to start discussion forums, which their classmates and teachers may participate in. They may also submit homework online, take timed and auto-graded quizzes and E-mail classmates if the teachers choose to set up those features.

After the presentation, Superintendent Joe Pye said a few kinks are still being worked out. Most notably, teachers have problems accessing and updating their online classrooms while at schools sites and must instead access the sites from their homes.

The district recently applied for a grant to increase its bandwidth – the capacity of a computer network to transmit information, particularly via the Internet – and Pye says once the bandwidth is expanded, teachers will be capable of visiting their sites from the schools.

Parents may register by visiting their child’s school Web site, all of which may be accessed from the district’s homepage: http://dorchester.schoolfusion.us.

Contact Michael Tannebaum at 873-9424 ext. 215 or mtannebaum@journalscene.com

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