Weebly wobble but it stands up strong

For a long time I had been searching for a way for my students to go to one location to access all the information needed to work within our class. The search actually started when I was continuously hearing from students, “I lost it. Do you have another one?” It is not that I did not believe that they did not lose it, it was that they then were waiting until the next class, when the assignment was due, to ask me for the directions to the assignment. The students were expecting to hand in the assignment the following class because they did not know what to do. So, I wanted a location that students could go to and find the information for the assignments. This got me to thinking that I could also post the information for those students that were missing class, posting the PowerPoint or notes for the day for those students who maybe cannot write as fast, or need a visual to comprehend and/or may be having a bad day and can comprehend the information at a later time. I also wanted to create links to the other on-line programs we are using in the class so students only have one location to go to.

Creating a website seemed like the right direction to go. I started working with Weebly.com, which basically is a drag and drop web design platform. The set up and the ease of using it worked great for my busy schedule. I had created websites in the past using Html language, but I had forgotten all of it and I did not have time to go back and relearn everything. And why should I have to when there are sites like Weebly.com that will do it for you.

Weebly.com is free to sign up and there is an upgrade package for a fee. The free version has a variety of features to begin a website that will allow you to create an appealing site. Both versions will allow you to load images, create a variety of pages, and insert assignment pages, contact forms, slideshow, photo gallery and more. The free version does not allow you to insert video and/or embed documents.

Weebly.com education version provides the same features but also has a protected environment where you can have your students create a website. As a teacher you are able to manage and can password protect your entire student’s websites. You are allowed up to 40 sites. For each additional 10 students there is a $10 charge. The platform also provides a blogging feature which is great to post assignments, class information, and/or news for students and parents. You are also able to buy your domain name if it is available. The weebly.com extension will not be on your URL address.

Creating websites for your class or having your students create websites on a topic can be a powerful tool for learning. Students are able to be creative with design as well as how they present their information. Weebly.com allows students to work at an idividual level or they are able to collaborate with one other or several students. The wonderful part about using a web 2.0 tool is that students do not have to be in one location. They can be from other classes within the school, within the state, country and/or world.

For teachers you can create a site for the course, on a topic, or for a specific assignment such as for a web quest. Weebly.com can also be used to create a portfolio of your work or for your curriculum vitae.

Here are some great examples of how weebly.com web creator are being used –

http://33359123.nhd.weebly.com/  - this site was created by a 6^th grade student for a project

http://depaolawebquest.weebly.com/  - a webquest created for elementary school but can be adapted for any grade level

http://www.merciermagic.com/ - an teacher that is using it for her class where there are an abundant of information located within this site. Notice how she had embedded the use of other technology tools within her site.

http://jenniferfariello.weebly.com/index.html  and http://www.michaellahammond.com/index.html   both have created their educational portfolios.

And here is the website ecbacon.weebly.com that I have created and use in my class.

I have enjoyed using weebly.com for a central location for my students to go to. They are able to go to our class site find information about assignments, notes from class, Power Points, due dates, contact information, as well as links to other tools we are using such as kidblog.com , voki.com and to our class wiki page. The only negative I have found was the formatting tools are temperamental at times. There are times when I copy and paste and have to spend time adjusting the formatting. This is typical with any web-based program, and it does depend on your computer and internet speed, but I have found it to happen more often than not. That being said, it is nothing that would deter me from continuing to use weebly.com.

And the other great thing about creating a website is that it continues to be a never ending work in progress.

Just remember when you are signing up for this free website creator tool (weebly.com) that you click on the education version which is located on the top blue tool bar.

Can you think how you would use weebly.com in your class? What lesson do you have now that the students could create a website rather than using another tool? What are your concerns about using a website creator? If you already use weebly.com, can you share your experience with us, good and bad? What do you think about using weebly.com?

Diigo - Orgainze me Please!!!

Social Bookmarking is a way for you to save, organize, monitor, and access on-line resources. Social bookmarking is a tool that is available to any on-line user. You are able to save the URL or a screenshot of the first page of a website for future access. If you are like me, I come across several dozen sites that provide me with information that I am currently using or want to use in the future. And I don’t want to have to remember how I searched for these particular sites or write down the URLs and then try to remember where I wrote it. Prior to learning about social bookmarking tools, I would save the sites in my favorites. And although it worked out well with creating files for the variety of topics I was interested in, it did not help me to organize and access them as quickly and as conveniently as an on-line social bookmarking tool. Yes I admit I have become that person that expects technology to provide things for me immediately. I don’t want to wait, look, or spend the time looking when something can do it for me quicker.

How do we choose what social bookmarker to use? Well, this answer is up to you and your preferences. There are many social bookmarkers out there but for the purpose of not overwhelming us, I will briefly discuss Diigo. Other bookmarking tools to check out are LiveBinder, and Sqworl. All three of these bookmarking tools are easy to set up and easy to use.

Diigo has been around for awhile. After the bookmarking tool Delicious (2003) popularized the use of on-line book marking tools, Diigo (2006) followed in its footsteps with its popularity.

Diigo allows you to save the URL from a site, make annotated comments about what the site is, how you would use it, what you would use it for, and/or any other information that you may want to remember why you wanted to save the site.

Diigo also allows you to use tags to help organize your resources. Tags come in handy because you can really get carried away with saving sites and then when you have to go back and think about what site is it you know you saw the information on, you can click on the tag of interests to find all the sites within that category.

Diigo also has a bookmarklet tool. What a bookmarklet tool does is it provides you with just one-click to do many functions. For instance, when you find yourself on a site that is of interest to you and you want to save this site you just click on the Diigolet icon on your toolbar (you have to load the Diigolet icon onto your computers toolbar by following the directions provided by the Diigo website.) Once you have this loaded, you are able to use many of the tools provided.  Within the Diigolet, the bookmark tool allows you to save the sites URL by capturing the title of the website, your annotated information about the site, create tags or use the tags they provide, and also allows you to share you findings with other groups.

There is also the highlight tool that allows you to highlight information of importance to you on the site so that when you go back to the site you will notice only the information of importance to you or if you are sharing the site, the information that you want others to see, is highlighted.

The other tool that works well is the sticky-note tool. This works just like a post-it note. Click on this and a note page appears. You can type in a reminder, information, a question, or anything that you want to make a note about for the site and/or page.  

The read-later tool is great for those sites you may not want to save but want to read at a later time. The tool will save the site for you to access it later to read.

Where these tools can be used with any browsers, Diigo also provides other tools such as screenshot (allows you to save a visual of the site) and quick-note tools, that can only be used with specific browsers.

Sharing your Diigo bookmarks or creating a shared bookmark group, is a great tool to use in the classroom for your students or among your colleagues. For you students you can create a group that allows them to access certain sites on particular topics. And for your colleagues you can create a shared bookmark group that houses sites that are related to issues related to teaching, content area topics, and/or tools for teaching. Creating shared groups is easy to do. Using the highlight tool or the sticky-note tool can became a positive benefit for any shared group. These tools take away from the time it may take to read a site and also allows for collaboration on both levels. 

Make sure you create lists for all your bookmarks. List help you further organize your sites. Create different lists for your different areas of interest and/or for you classroom. Lists allow you to create a list on your topic of study and share it with your students. . On the main library page, go to the “My List” section. Click on edit and here is where you can title your lists, give a description of your list, as well as make your list public or private. Your list will show up on your left side toolbar within your library.

Think about using Diigo in your classroom. By creating groups and lists, you can organize your topics so that students can easily access the information they need. You can also create an group and have your students do the research on the topic and add the sites for other students to use.

Check out this video on how to incorporate Diigo in the classroom. 

Don't forget to visit the Community tab within Diigo. to find sites that others have bookmarked to share. I do not know how Diigo has this set up, but it seems to target bookmarks that are of interest to most of my bookmarks. Diigo mysterious!!

At first I did not like Diigo. I thought it was too simplistic and “wordy.” To me it just looked like a list of sites with words attached to them. And although all the sites of interest were in the same spot, I had a difficult time finding what I needed without reading all the titles or using the tabs and then reading all the titles. After playing around with all the settings I was able to organize even further with the use of the “My Lists” feature. Now, like when I saved my sites in my favorites, I was able to organize them into groups that I can easily access and find. And although this sounds like it was doing me a service, I still was not completely pleased with the site. I started looking at other sites because I am a visual person. What this means when using a social booking marking tool is that I don’t always remember the name of the site or the tab I could have put it under, but I can tell you some features that the pages of the site consisted of. I find things quicker on a visual level. It is like when that person comes up to you and starts talking to you as if you are great friends, you know the face but for the life of you, you can’t remember the name. Diigo must have heard my cries because they now have a screenshot feature. This allows you to bookmark the site by saving the screen you are looking at. You can capture the first page of the site or any other page within the site. The only downfall is that you have to be using  Google Chrome, Mozilla FireFox, or Apple Safari browsers. This is not a downfall if you already use them or are willing to use them, which I have done.

Here is my Diigo Library. I say it is a work in progress. Enjoy and feel free to save any sites into your Diigo account.

What social bookmarking tool do you use? Do you use Diigo? What do you think? What neat feature do you use with Diigo? What challenges have you encountered with Diigo? How do you use it in your classroom? Would you use it in your classroom?