Review by Charles Garrison

To view all the Absegami teachers sites made using k12-mail Click here ,
Real good sites to view are:
John Sharpe, Chip Garrison, Lisa Zeuner and Faye Wilcox

A Review of the K12 Website for Online Course Management
Of all of the online course management programs offered by Absegami High School , K12 is probably the easiest to use and would therefore be beneficial to those teachers who are doing very basic, rudimentary work with online course management. Its ease of use makes it attractive to those teachers who may not be as experienced in terms of web page design programming software. K12 is a good program for teachers who want to post information for a class online, offer simple messages and downloadable documents and to keep an online calendar.

To make things remarkably simple for first time web-page designers, K12 offers templates of what web pages most educators would need. There are basic color schemes, so there is no need to worry about shading backgrounds, etc. You simply select one of the themes and you're set to begin. Again, for the more advanced user, this may seem very basic. A teacher designing a webpage would then choose from the following list of the templates offered by K12. The descriptions which follow are taken from the K12 help program. My comments about each template's strengths and weaknesses are italicized below each section.

Home Page

• Automatically becomes the first page people see when they come to your website.
• Can generate an automatic Site Directory showing the titles and descriptions of all your web pages.
• You can also add blocks of text or text and pictures and re-arrange their order on the page.

As written above, the Home Page does all of this. Adding pictures to the home page can get tricky – you have to create a new home page and then delete the old one.

Blog

• Blog page entries are presented in chronological order, showing newest entries first.
• You can create many blog pages, each one targeted to different audiences and/or topics.
• You can also create just one blog, and tag the entries on it for specific audiences and/or topics.
• Entries can be sorted by audience, topic, and creation date.

This is one area I haven't really fully used yet, but it seems that this would be an ideal place to keep a running log of lessons covered etc.  

Homework Assignments

• Homework assignments are presented in chronological order, showing newest entries first.
• You can create many homework assignments pages, each one for a different class.
• You can also create just one homework assignments page, and tag entries for specific classes.
• Entries can be sorted by class, assigned date and due date.

This is a nice function to keep track of assignments – the one drawback is again, the lack of two-way communication to check to see if students are checking the files. They can certainly e-mail the teacher through K12, but it isn't as easy as a program like Web-Assign. Lesson Plans

• Create lesson plans that can be located by date and class.
• Lesson plans are presented in a familiar book format.
• You can create many lesson plan pages.

This page is interesting and can, with the homework pages, certainly provide parents with information they might want about what is being covered, etc.

Picture Album

• Upload your pictures to display in a thumbnail gallery.
• You can click on thumbnails to view the larger image.
• Large images are conveniently resized.
• You can give pictures titles and descriptions.
• You can create many picture album pages.

This is a great function if you are either running a club web page (for activity photos) or if you have a number of images/photos involved in a lesson. A history teacher, for example, could put photos and images of Ancient Greece and create lesson plans and assignments based on using the photos. What was difficult about this template was the inability to control the order in which the photos were put. I found that numbering them with a two or three digit system worked best – i.e. Photo 001, Photo 002, etc. If you just put the description, K12 re-organizes the photos alphabetically or numerically.
File Downloads

• Upload your files to display as a list of links.
• You can click on links to download the files to your computer.
• You can give files titles and descriptions.
• Files are automatically virus scanned!
• You can create many File Downloads pages.

This is a nice feature for putting homework worksheets, etc. online so students can't say they couldn't do homework because they weren't in class. I'm not really sure what to make of the memory available to us in this program – this might be a drawback depending on how many photos you put on the sight.
Bulletin Board

• Use to show important, eye-catching messages.
• You can click on the notes to get more information.
• You can create notes in a variety of colors.
• You can create many Bulletin Boards.

Of all of the functions and templates, I like this one the most. Creating the individual notes and categories is very simple and straightforward and gives students reminders, information about chapters, etc. Parents can certainly see announcements about tests, etc. These really can accommodate to much information, but they're a nice addition to the program.
Calendar

• Use to display scheduled events.
• You can hover your mouse over the entry to see more information or click on the entry to get more information.
• You can click on calendar dates to see all events for that day.
• Events can span one or many days.
• Events can have start and stop times.
• You can create many Calendar pages.

Having extensively used this program with my drama club, I can say that this function works quite well and is relatively easy to use.
Internet Resources

• Use to display collections of internet links.
• You can click on links to open them in a new window.
• Links can be arranged in categories.
• You can create many Internet Resource Links pages.

This is a nice page to use – just be careful that websites are safe.
Contact Page

• Use to display a web form that sends E-mail to your WebMailPRO account.
• You can create many Contact pages customized for different purposes.

When you can receive e-mail directly from this program, it's a nice bonus. I used it to sell tickets to our shows and had quite a few responses.

So what are the drawbacks? The simplicity of K12 is both its greatest asset and most prominent liability; it doesn't provide the two-way, more instant communication offered by Blackboard and Web Assign, nor is it flexible enough for the advanced web site designer who would certainly want to create a page more unique than what is offered here. Also, the repetitive need to constantly save material may grate on those who get impatient waiting for such things. Finally, to fully enact the web site, you need to contact Joe Filink so a link can be created from the school web site to your personal site.

As mentioned above, this is the ideal online management program for those teachers with a very limited experience with web page design who are seeking a fairly simplistic level of course interaction in online management.