Weebly, the teacher friendly website.

This past semester at Burke High school, I was forced to use a computer lab for 3 hours straight during block scheduling due to my plan periods being 1st and 3rd. During this time, I spoke with another teacher in the building who happened to be the new social studies teacher for the semester. She was asking me a lot of questions, and I was responding. Somehow we got on the topic of having a website. She mentioned she just recently made one for a Master's class she was taking. I asked her what she used to make one so quickly, and her response was; http://www.weebly.com. I immediately went to the site to check it out. The format was easy to follow and after only a few minutes of playing around, I had designed a very basic website that my students could use. I looked up what educators were saying about weebly and found this blog especially helpful: http://teachinghistory.org/digital-classroom/tech-for-teachers/23819

For teachers

This site can seem intimidating as most technology driven ideas can be; especially to the teacher who struggles with the technologies out there today. However, I want to reassure all of you that you can use this site with little to no help provided you have some time and patience. By time I mean about 30-45 minutes for the extremely inexperienced and 10-15 minutes for the experienced teachers. By patience I mean you need to be willing to use trial and error to figure some things out if you don't have a tech person in your pocket. Here is what 21st world global productions had to say about weebly: http://twentyfirstworld.weebly.com/what-is-weebly.html

Now I'll explain how to get started and how to use this technology.

1. Create a free teacher's account. Simply visit www.weebly.com and on the very first page that comes up, create your username and password. Boom. You've created your site.

2. You will then decide step by step which type of website you want use (free or pay as you go). I would select free.

3. Once you have decided on that information, you will decide if you want to include a blog that can be set to private.

4. By this step, your site is created, and you can now begin to modify its contents. My site is not currently published, therefore I cannot show you the site I am currently modifying, but modifications are simple. All of your options are located at the top of your new website. You simply click the tabs to see what you get with each new tab.

5. From left to right they read: Elements, Design, Pages, Editors, and Settings. By clicking on these tabs, you will see all available options to explore.

6. You also will options on the left hand margin to choose from. They read from top to bottom: Basic, Multimedia, Revenue, and More. Basic will give you options that roll up the top of your screen that you can simply drag and click down to your newly created site. Once down there, you will be given options on how to proceed. Multimedia allows you to incorporate several types of media on your site. Some aspects will need to be paid for as desired. The revenue link will show you how to make money on your site and how to sell things.(which most teachers won't use for educational purposes.)

7. At all times you can add things you like to the site. For example on my site I have 6 tabs for students to explore. I have a tab for each unit in the second semester. From each tab you can create another page. On my Cold War page I have links to websites I think students would find helpful, and pictures and multimedia that will help them understand difficult concepts. The same things are on my Vietnam page. The goal is to make sure you constantly add content that will help students.

Here is a video I found on YouTube that really shows the ease with which this site can be created.



For students

I would give students this website information and how to access it within the first few weeks of school. If they are absent from class or need more information for a project, they will be able to find some information here they may have missed or they may need to supplement their knowledge. Students will be shown within the first 2 weeks of school how to access the site and a tutorial provided by the library media specialist on how to navigate it properly. I would also include a blog on my site and teach students what a blog is and how to use the technology. I would then begin the extensive process of getting permission slips filled out and test runs on the blog, etc... Basically students need to be shown how to properly use a blog and how to behave using a blog.

Here is one last article that explains why it was on TIME Magazine's top 50 websites list in 2007.

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,1633488_1633608_1633636,00.html