Publishing on the Web

Tool: www.weebly.com

This tool is an open source. The use of this tool is free. The language of this tool is English and it is available for people of all ages.

Advantages:

The website weebly.com is a great tool to create your first internet page on your own. The handling is very easy and the several steps to create your site are given to you by little hint-bubbles which appear on the screen when you are working with weebly.com for the first time. It also makes it possible to change everything you want whenever you want to and keeps your internet page always up to date. On weebly.com the students are able to publish their own works and to let them comment by others. Through this, the students will be much more motivated to work creatively and to give more accuracy into their pieces of work because they will not only be commented by others but also be presented to the whole world-wide-web community. Being aware of this huge audience the students´ skills of writing, spelling and the correct grammar use will increase because the possibility exists to be taunted if they do not watch their language.

Concrete examples:

o   Simplified (students of the 9th grade): Before using the tool weebly.com the whole class agrees on a specific topic, like Shakespeare for example. Now the class separates into smaller work groups and the teacher gives writing instructions to each of these groups. One of the groups has to write a paragraph about Shakespeare´s life, another one has to write about his works, about theatre in the Elizabethan Age and so on. Every group has access to the weebly-site where it gets one particular “under page” for its task. To give the possibility not to publish the whole paragraph and to provide it to the World Wide Web before the writing task is completely absolved, the several groups are allowed to hide their pages so no external guest of the weebly-site will be able to read the unfinished paragraphs.

o   More challenging (students of the 12th grade): Each student gets his own weebly.com account and each lesson there will be new working tasks provided by the teacher which the students have to absolve. The tasks can include several pieces of work like paragraphs, pictures or mind maps. Each student has the duty to select a number of several tasks and to publish his results on his weebly-site where it can be read and commented by other students, the teacher and anyone else on the web.

Use of the tool:

o   First Time:

If you have never used Weebly.com before, you have to register or to sign up by typing in a username, your e-mail-address and a password of your choice. To avoid mechanical abuse, the sign in option on Weebly.com is protected by a random generator that offers you two words which you have to enter into the designated position. After that is done you will be able to sign in again easily only by typing in your username and your password. Being registered, you have to enter a title for your website and, not obligatory, define the type of the site you are creating. The next step to create your site is to choose your website domain. Here you have to decide if you want to use a sub domain of Weebly.com, so your http-address will end with the words “.weebly.com”, or if you want to register a complete new domain in which the word “weebly” does not occur and ends on “.com”, “.net” or “.org” – just as you like and what is available. Another option is to use a domain you already own and to connect the Weebly-site with it. For being a first-time-user, you will choose the option to create a sub domain of Weebly.com and you will be guided automatically to your personal weebly.com site.

            Now you are able to design your site as you like by choosing one of the design proposals Weebly.com offers to you. These proposals can be changed by choosing them and using the design options where you can adapt e.g. the lettering to your personal requirements.

            By using the page editor, you will be able to create more pages which means that you can separate your weebly.com page into several “under pages” which will be apparent and selectable at your homepage. By this tool it is also possible to create a blog where other people can leave comments on your work and you are able to comment on that, too.

o   Expert:

It is possible to hide a page, so it will not appear in the navigation menu of your website. The data content of this page will still be available for you but external guests on this page will not be able to see and therefore not to read it. It would also be possible to protect a page by setting a password but to do this you would have to grade your weebly-tool up to weebly pro which is not for free anymore. It is possible at any time to change the settings of your page, like the title or the address.

o   Practical hints:

o   When you sign yourself in you have to look closely at the particular slot of the sign in monitor because there it is shown to you automatically whether the username or the e-mail-address you want to use is still available or already in use.

o   The option to create a complete new domain for your site is not offered for free. You will be asked for credit card information so you cannot register in for this payment accidentally.  

o   It is absolutely necessary whenever anything has been changed on the weebly-site to click on the “Publish” button – otherwise any change will not be saved and be lost.