websitecreation

There are many tools out there to create websites. Choosing the best tool for the students based on the content and the age of the students is important.

While traditional website creation can produce fantastic results much effort and time needs to be spent learning and working with a website creation program such as Adobe’s [|Dreamweaver], Microsoft’s [|Expression], and the freebie [|Kompozer]. So if a teacher desires to focus on the content and not on the tool what would one suggest? Here are four tools available at your fingertips:

1. Horizon First Class Web Publishing (Gr. 9-12 recommended)

The firstclass web pushing tool is available for to any student with a Horizon First Class account. Individual schools may need to contact our the FirstClass administrator to turn this on. The tool does require some getting used to and the surrounding media literacy skills will need to be taught.
 * Look for the Web Publishing Icon on the First Class desktop to begin.For some how to’s check out my infusion site[| here!]Some thoughts:Although the tool is easy to learn it lacks web 2.0 look and it is harder to add cool stuff to it. || [[image:http://learning.hzsd.ca/ict/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/capture.jpg width="91" height="61" link="http://learning.hzsd.ca/ict/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/capture.jpg"]] ||

2. Yola (Synthasite) online Web Publisher (Gr. 9-12 recommended)

Yola, formerly called Synthasite, is by far the most diverse and complete online web development tool I have ever come across.



Start from a template and construct a site with little or no technical skills needed! Synthasite handles all types of web content, it support embedding and layout is reasonably flexible. The free sign up is quick and easy. The only downside to the site is that a teacher would not have control of the content.

3. Wix

The [|Wix] website creation tool is truly amazing. It is the best of the tools by far for students Gr. 2-10. It has a very simplified signup, it supports multiple sites, the tool set is very extensive, it supports animation and all types of media. It is only lacking in embedding your own Web 2.0 media choices. Thus for an older grade I would still choose synthasite. This site is amazing! [] Created by a individual in Wynyard High. more here --- [] Check out my wix example as a website version [|here!] Here are some student samples: Nokomis School - Grade 4 Whales and Literature Research! [|Whales1], [|Whales2], [|Whales3] Holdfast School - Creative Writing - The Twelve Days of Christmas! [|Xmas1], [|Xmas2], [|Xmas3], [|Xmas4], [|Xmas5], [|Xmas6] Teacher content samples: 1. [|To Kill A Mockingbird - ELA 20 Novel Study] 2. [|Creative Writing 20 Course]

4. Weebly [|Weebly] came onto the scene as an ultra simple drag and drop website construction tool. Although it is a little limited for the free edition you can certainly put it to good use. I have used it with Grades 4 and 5 successfully to create website in plant science.

Check out sample site I created here -> [] Any comments? Things to add?

5. Webnode

[] - more to come here,