MACUL SIGTELE

Web Site Creation for the Non-Techie

September 19, 2008

Over the years, I’ve learned a lot of amateurish ways to create a web site. My first experience was with Netscape Composer. From there I moved to saving MS Word files as web pages and then on to using the MS Publisher webpage creation tools. All of these options also required a host server and a rudimentary knowledge of ftp. When I tried to teach other educators how to make web sites with these tools I met with limited success. All of the participants created sites, 90% of them actually got them uploaded to a server and available online, but only a very small percentage ever followed through with regular updates. It was just too complicated…

Now, with the advent of Web 2.0 and the proliferation of freely available tools on the Internet there are many options that make creating a web site fast and easy. The creator of the site simply logs in and, using tools much like those found in word processing software, creates the site and posts it to the Internet by clicking “Publish.” The three online tools for web site creation that I want to highlight here are Protopage, Pageflakes and Weebly.

Protopage
I was first exposed to Protopage at a “Let’s Talk Technology” meeting. Jim Wenzloff was our presenter and as a sidebar showed us his Protopage site. We all immediately wanted to know how the site was created and Jim was gracious enough to stray from his original topic and show us how to get started. Basically, you get a page before you even register. You add and manipulate a variety of widgets and tabs to personalize your site. If you like what you create, you can then register and you’ll be able to save and share your site. Several of the “Let’s Talk” members have gone on to use Protopage as the means to share resources with other educators. (Be sure to use the tabs near the top of the page when you are exploring these sites.) Jane Perzyk created this Protopage site for a presentation at the 2008 Educational Technology Coordinators Conference (ETCC) on “Juicing up the Online Learning Experience with Twitter, Protopage and other Web 2.O Tools.” Carol Isakson uses this Protopage site to hold the resources from a variety of workshops she has facilitated for Wayne RESA and the Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning (MACUL.) Chris Skoglund and Rose McKenzie use this Protopage site to support the work of the MACUL special interest group for Special Education. Their site links to even more examples of Protopage sites created by educators.

Pageflakes
I don’t recall how I first learned about Pageflakes, but it is another web site creation tool that is worth exploring. Pageflakes and Protopage are very similar, but on Pageflakes the “widgets” stay in nice orderly rows. Pageflakes has the same “tab format” for accessing other pages within a site. In Pageflakes, your site and pages are private to you until you create a “Pagecast” which then gives the public access to your work. I created a Pageflakes site to collect and share resources with classroom teachers. You can check out my site here. Frank Miracola made this Pageflakes site to share resources from workshops he facilitates.

Weebly
The last site I’m going to talk about is Weebly. I learned about this one from the aforementioned Frank Miracola. At a meeting for the REMC Instructional Technology Specialists group, Frank showed us the website “Begin With Me,” which was created with Weebly. We were all very impressed with the look and feel of the site! Frank gave us a quick overview of how Weebly works and we were even more impressed. With Weebly you create a more traditional looking website. The tools are set up in a tabbed format and many of them are drag & drop or one click away from becoming a part of your site. Your site remains private until you choose to publish it. A nice feature of Weebly is that you can download the site to keep a backup copy and/or host it on your own server. Frank shared with us how quickly and easily he has been able to get other educators and even students up and running with their websites. Teaching with Technology and Curriculum and Instructional Technology are two more examples of sites created with Weebly:

With these tools and the many others that are out there, it’s now convenient, fun and easy to create and update your own web site. Let us know which tool you are using for your site and why you like it. Please share a link to your site too!

Posted by: Laura Cummings, SIGTELE Director

Entry Filed under: Educational Technology, Web 2.0. Tags: Frank Miracola, jim wenzloff, pageflakes, protopage, web authoring tools, weebly.