Free, Easy, Collaborative Website Creation???

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Danny Nicholson on April 27, 2009 at 1:47pm

set up a free wiki at wikispaces and give them all access to it?

http://www.wikispaces.com/site/for/teachers

here's a guide: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13399879/Quick-Wiki-Guide

or set up a free blog at wordpress.com

Wiki is probably the easiest way of doing it.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Anne Pemberton on April 27, 2009 at 3:47pm

Bernadette,

What web page software do you have on your school computer. Word (and other word processors), Front Page, and Dreamweaver all make web pages easily. It may be easiest for your students to work in a word processor, They need to upload the document, and the pictures to the same location. If you need a website to put it on, let me know. BTW, it is a good idea, if they can work directly on the website, to put the pictures in a file on the main directory where the website will sit. Make a new subdirectory called images, and put the pictures in there. On the machine where they are developing the webpage, also make a subdirectory called images. Then when they link to the pictures it will work on their home computer as well as on the web.

Anne
apembert@erols.com
http://www.educationalsynthesis.org

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Donelle on April 27, 2009 at 4:00pm

Have you tried Weebly? I just heard about it from a workshop this week.

Here's a description from their site:

What can I do with Weebly?

* Create a free website & blog
* Easy drag and drop interface
* No technical skills required
* Dozens of professional designs
* Free domain hosting

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Matthew Allen on April 27, 2009 at 5:54pm

I personally use shutterfly for my website. I know some teachers in my school that have used it for your purpose. It's extremely easy to use...check out my website.

mrallen1.shutterfly.com

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on April 27, 2009 at 5:54pm

I like the creativity and visual appeal of a website over a wiki to showcase student work. You can see our curriculum websites . Scroll down to Curriculum Unit websites. .

I use Microsoft Frontpage to do my websites, an old and probably outdated standby, and of course you have to pay for a domain name and pay to have server to host it. This might be more work than you want to go to, but you can probably get a similar effect using Weebly--easy and free

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by expertalan on April 27, 2009 at 8:25pm

I have once done this. I asked my students to do powerpoint presentations about Eugene O'Neill and email the presentations to me. Then I applied a blog on blog spot, use some powerpoint to flash converter to convert the sutdents' powerpoint to flash and upload these flashes to the blog. This blog is kinda like our class blog for knowledge sharing. All the students could went to browse it with no difficulties.

Of course, I guess the better way is to use some LMS to do this, but since you said preferrably free and easy, I guess blog would be the way you want:)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by suehellman on April 28, 2009 at 4:07am

I like Squidoo. There are limitations to the general layout but it's built of modules that can be rearranged easily and lets them concentrate on the content. If they share the login, they can collaborate on building their website.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Bernadette Roche on April 28, 2009 at 9:15am

Thanks for all the great suggestions. I ended up finding weebly and using it. I wasn't very good about planning ahead and needed something *now* to have the kids get started on. It may not be ideal for long term purposes, but it works for now.

In the meantime, you all gave me great ideas to investigate this summer in preparation for next year. Man! I hate not having enough time and having to fly by the seat of my pants :)

• ▶ Reply