Chuck Dresel, a middle school teacher at Redwood Middle School in Napa, California, uses Sandvox to create several websites for the social studies classes he teaches. The first of his sites to catch our eye was one he created for his Social Studies 7 class. Mr. Dresel told us that using Sandvox means he can spend more time on student work and less time maintaining the site. He wrote:
I'm a middle school teacher who doesn't have a lot of time to maintain a quality website for my class/students. Sandvox is the perfect tool for me because it allows me to quickly and easily provide my students with all the information they need to stay successful in my class and it really looks great. I use the blog collection to post and manage homework assignments; most documents that students need for my class are available from various download collections; students are able to access their current grades which are posted on the same server via ftp and then linked back to the Sandvox site; students can earn extra credit by completing several web-based geolab assignments that incorporate QuickTime video and audio files; and of course it is very easy to contact me using the contact form pagelet. Sandvox also makes it really easy to incorporate some really cool add-ons like Google custom search. Thanks again for making a great product.
More recently, Mr. Dresel has created a site for his Social Studies 8 class, and in addition to making homework assignments and supplementary reading available for download, the "B-3 Audio Files" section of his site makes class activities available via podcasts that can either be listened to online or downloaded by students for their iPods or iTunes libraries. Useful links for students appear in text and in a List of Links pagelets, and, so no one misses an assignment, homework information and deadlines are available via an RSS feed.
Those are just a few of the Sandvox tools teachers can make use of when designing their class websites with Sandvox. If you're a teacher who wants a great looking, effective website for your class, why not download the free demo version of Sandvox and get your class website up and running today?