What information on a teacher website?

I should clarify something: The idea is for these websites to be a landing site. Some teachers do put assignments online; they'll use an online wiki/Moodle/something else to do so that's more conducive to frequent updates. These wikis would be linked from their landing page. While teachers will be able to update their websites whenever they want, requiring updating assignments is not going to happen. We do have an online gradebook system, but using it to keep track of upcoming assignments doesn't work very well.

my teacher page, the one the district requires me to have, contains basic contact info, a little blurb about my philosophy (chiefly pertaining to homework and responsibility n-stuff), and a script that fetches and serves the feedburner feed for my class blog. the blog is the thing that really matters, and it's where my parents go to keep updated with what's going on in our room. it's hosted off-site at blogspot. i update it everyday. takes a couple minutes. use it to post homework, announcements, forms, and sundry other things. wanna see what i'm talking about? just pm me and i'll give ya the links.

http://ask.metafilter.com/176952/What-information-on-a-teacher-website#2546522: "If you can't put homework up --- then I don't need anything more than teachers' names and contact info. I dont care about teaching philosophy --- if I can't choose the teacher based on that philosophy or have an opportunity to influence their philosophy, why do I care" Well, on the one hand I agree, but on the other, it helps to have a point of reference when you are talking to the teacher and when your child brings home an assignment that seems odd. "Oh, its because my teacher believes in letting them figure it out on their own is why he gave an assignment on information my daughter has never seen."

Having assignments posted is a huge benefit to parents and students. Many kids live in more than 1 household. Your school should help teachers learn to post weekly syllabus updates. It shouldn't take a great deal of time, and the benefits are significant.

if I can't choose the teacher based on that philosophy or have an opportunity to influence their philosophy, why do I care? I would still find this information useful, especially in conferences, or in working with my child to understand why a certain approach was being taken. Also, perhaps to pinpoint areas where there might be a mismatch. For instance, if my child were struggling with math skills and the teacher was embracing an inquiry approach that was leaving my child behind due to lack of drill and practice, I might want to supplement that with practice at home. Regardless of whether you choose the teacher, knowing their pedagogical approach and understanding how it might interacts with your child's particular needs, strengths, and weaknesses could be a great help to managing your child's education.

If you can't put homework up --- then I don't need anything more than teachers' names and contact info. I dont care about teaching philosophy --- if I can't choose the teacher based on that philosophy or have an opportunity to influence their philosophy, why do I care?

One thing I'd like to see is some suggestions for things that parents can do outside of class to help their students, similar to http://ask.metafilter.com/176380/Extra-homework-Dad-Again, especially if they are related to the content of that grade level. If Science class this year will be all about animals, suggest a visit to the Nature Museum. Games to play, educational video games, songs to learn, books to check out of the library, etc. There doesn't have to be any accounting or extra credit, just some suggestions.

Information on what kind of parent volunteer help the teacher needs, especially if there is work that can be done outside of normal school hours. +1

My district has an online gradebook system and separate teacher websites (through SchoolCenter.) We are required to have our schedule, contact information, and syllabus posted. I do more but I keep in mind that not everyone has internet access outside of school so it's not generally the ONLY place I put important information. I update my site every day and it's really not a pain. I created a calendar page where I can summarize what we did in class and I got my students/parents to sign up as subscribers to the page so that I can send out text message or email subscribers. On days when there is HW I send out a quick text like this "Bio-finish notes, A&P-quiz, Enviro-relax!" My students LOVE them and I have definitely had a noticeable increase in the amount of homework being turned in on time and students willing to come early for help. The vast majority of my subscribers get the messages via texts because my community is not very well off and many of my students don't have internet at home (or they have really slow connections.) An added benefit of updating every day: I can "train" my kiddos to check the website before coming to me after an absence. On my subject specific pages, I generally just put links I expect kids to use on webquests, to help with review for quizzes, or for links to google docs that the kids need to collaborate on. Just yesterday I added some video data from experiments students are running. I also currently have a survey for our sophs and juniors to take regarding next year's science electives which is MUCH easier for me to manage than handing out slips of paper to other teachers and then tallying up.