Create Your Class Website for FREE!

I am bringing back the weekly feature:  Classroom Tech in 3 Minutes or Less!  Whoo hoo!

Today’s topic is how to create a classroom website using Shutterfly.

I have heard of Shutterfly, but had no idea you could actually create a private website that you could customize for a classroom!

Parents have to be invited and have the link in order to be able to view the content, so you won’t have any low-caliber people just randomly checking out your kids.

You can add lots of different pages to the website, which will then show up on the top tab menu bar, including pictures and videos, forums, forms, class rosters, calendars, and message boards!

Parents can also subscribe to the RSS Feed at the bottom and be notified whenever you update the sections – even cooler! I love that you are able to tag photos.

As a parent myself, I would love for there to be a place where I could see all my child’s pictures and then be able to order them right from my own computer, without having to track down the teacher to have her find the photo, download it, and send it to me in an email.  That gets to be a lot!

If you use digital portfolios, you could even tag students in on their work so that you have a portfolio collection right at your fingertips!

Ok – enough with the words, watch the video below to check it out for yourself.  Pretty cool!

Prefer to read the transcript? I’ve got you covered there too!

“Hi! It’s great to see you today.

I am bringing back a really cool feature that I started at the end of the last school year, which is called “Classroom Tech in Three Minutes or Less.”

I’m going to show you something really cool today and I’m only going to have three minutes to show it to you. So I have my handy little timer right next to me. Whenever you hear this sound, then you know that my three minutes is up. And for those of you who know me, I tend to be long-winded, so this should be interesting.

Let’s get started. Let me start my timer. Okay.

Today I want to show you a really cool way to set up a free website for your classroom that is so easy and so simple and so cool. And I had no idea until a fan from the Organized Classroom’s Facebook page mentioned it.

Head to shutterfly.com, which for the record, I always thought this was just for pictures to share pictures amongst family members who don’t live next to each other.

All you do is go in and set up a free account. Took me about three seconds to give them my email address, set up a password in my name, and then go to share, and you can get a free site.

You could choose the kind of site that you want first up.

So let’s do a classroom site – and we’re going to manage our classroom site website that is going to come up with you could actually even pick the school if you want your school code in there, all that, all the other good stuff.

And only the people that you choose will be able to have to sign in and able to get into your site. Perfect for keeping everything private for your students and families.

So once you do all that, you come over to your site and this is what it looks like for you. It’s pretty cool. I love this.

It has spots where you can put pictures in. These are obviously not pictures of my classroom. They’re just pictures that I threw together from my big back to school event from some of my sponsors.

But you could add class and news updates, upcoming events, key contacts, how they can get ahold of you.

You can add links, Organized Classroom, of course is going to be in there as well. Ha!

You could add files. So I added in my spelling menu right in there. Parents can download it and they can use it for homework.

You can actually tag in students on any of the pictures or videos.

Let’s say you want to make a cool screencast like I am right now. You can upload one about how to do something in your classroom, so that’s super handy for parents and/or students to see how something works in the physical space.

There’s a calendar on here so you can put your upcoming events.

I also really like the volunteer list. So if you need volunteers for something, put a wishlist down, parents can see it.

Class lists and contact info is always a good thing.

For discussions, it’s like an inline message board. I posted a topic that I could do once a week. For example: “What is your favorite family meal to eat at dinner, blah, blah, blah.”

Anyway, so it’s really cool guys. And it’s free.

You give the parents your specific URL and only then they can come in and see it and interact with it and interact with you.

They are able to send an email right to you right from this site as well.

So if you have a question about something, they can answer via the same interface.

All right, there we go. We’re all done. {Gotta love that timer.}

They do even have a free room parent guide that you can download as well. It’s kind of cool.

So anyway, hope you have enjoyed taking a look at this classroom website brought to you by Shutterfly. You can edit all kinds of things in here and get fancy. But if you just want something simple you can do that too. Whatever that you like.

If you don’t have a classroom website program that you guys use in your specific school, go with Shutterfly.

Fantastic. I hope you have enjoyed Classroom Tech in Three Minutes or Less.

All right, we’ll see you later. Thanks so much. Bye.”

How would you utilize Shutterfly in your classroom?

I would love if you left a comment below!

Enjoy!

~Charity