Weebly: Creating a Homepage is Easy
Creating a homepage with html is hard work and requires good knowledge. But there are people like me who would like to make a webpage without having to learn and understand how html works and without being frustated about the difficulty and the time it takes to do it. That is why Weebly is a good alternative. You can set up your own website quite easily, free and it is fun as well!
How does it work?
It is simple. You just have to register on weebly.com. Then you can start working on your page. The good thing is that you don't have to pay for it which is also an advatage regarding the use at school. Setting up means that you can choose a design, you can add pictures and texts and different other elements such as a blog or a contact form or a video. You can always change things or move them around. Everything is predesigned for you, you just have to decide what you want to include.
Be careful: Once you have changed something and want to undo it, that is not possible as Weebly saves your work automatically!
What can you use Weebly for in school?
Weebly offers a wonderful opportunity to make students work with a new media tool technically and use the English language and therefore practice their writing skills. In the lower grades (6/7), it would support the opportunity to create individual homepages (each student works on his or her own) where students introduce theirselves to their classmates or even to students from an English school class who will be part of a student exchange. The younger students would work with the computer, create their own page which can be really fun and motivating and practice their writing skills. If the aim is not only to have the classmates look at each others pages, but also students from other classes (exchange students or whoever) it becomes even more motivating not only to create a nice page but also to write good texts! If they add a blog on their page, they could start writing to their (maybe future) host families.
I am not talking about a specific project here, these are just my ideas for how Weebly could be used in an Englisch classroom.
Another possibility which would be appropriate for all grades is the creation of a homepage on a specific topic. It would be comparable to a presentation or report with the only difference that the content is saved on a webpage everyone can access whenever he or she wants. There could be different topics which could also relate to other subjects. In the "Oberstufe" for example you could set up homepages on Shakespeare, especially focusing on his sonnets so that each homepage deals with Shakespeare and one or more of his sonnets. You can work on any topic that you have to cover during a school year according to the curriculum or, if you have enough time, you can also work on a topic which has no direct connection to the curriculum.
Another idea that comes to my mind is that you could also use grammatical content for a webpage where on the one hand new grammar could be explained more lively using supporting videos or the like and on the other hand material like worksheets for a certain topic could be uploaded as well. Such a page could exist during the whole school year and support students to learn and repeat new grammar. If a new grammatical feature has been introduced, the teacher could ask a small group of students to update the grammar homepage. It goes withoput saying that the teacher has to make sure that the content added by the students is correct and that he also has to add material there if necessary. Have a look at my chapter "Additional Material" and click on the "Learn English Blog" if you want to see how it could look like (That webpage is a blog which has not been created by students!).
All in all, Weebly is a free tool with which you can realize different intentions. It diversifies the variety of tools you use in class and students might be motivated by working on their own products which will be made public afterwards.
Creating a website offers so many opportunities, not only regarding the choice of possible contents, or teaching aims, but also regarding the activation of the students! I am sure that Weebly will definitely be a "new media tool" in my classroom in the future!
In the subchapter Geography on Weebly I will show you a Weebly page I set up on a topic related to geography.
added: November 13, 2010
How does it work?
It is simple. You just have to register on weebly.com. Then you can start working on your page. The good thing is that you don't have to pay for it which is also an advatage regarding the use at school. Setting up means that you can choose a design, you can add pictures and texts and different other elements such as a blog or a contact form or a video. You can always change things or move them around. Everything is predesigned for you, you just have to decide what you want to include.
Be careful: Once you have changed something and want to undo it, that is not possible as Weebly saves your work automatically!
What can you use Weebly for in school?
Weebly offers a wonderful opportunity to make students work with a new media tool technically and use the English language and therefore practice their writing skills. In the lower grades (6/7), it would support the opportunity to create individual homepages (each student works on his or her own) where students introduce theirselves to their classmates or even to students from an English school class who will be part of a student exchange. The younger students would work with the computer, create their own page which can be really fun and motivating and practice their writing skills. If the aim is not only to have the classmates look at each others pages, but also students from other classes (exchange students or whoever) it becomes even more motivating not only to create a nice page but also to write good texts! If they add a blog on their page, they could start writing to their (maybe future) host families.
I am not talking about a specific project here, these are just my ideas for how Weebly could be used in an Englisch classroom.
Another possibility which would be appropriate for all grades is the creation of a homepage on a specific topic. It would be comparable to a presentation or report with the only difference that the content is saved on a webpage everyone can access whenever he or she wants. There could be different topics which could also relate to other subjects. In the "Oberstufe" for example you could set up homepages on Shakespeare, especially focusing on his sonnets so that each homepage deals with Shakespeare and one or more of his sonnets. You can work on any topic that you have to cover during a school year according to the curriculum or, if you have enough time, you can also work on a topic which has no direct connection to the curriculum.
Another idea that comes to my mind is that you could also use grammatical content for a webpage where on the one hand new grammar could be explained more lively using supporting videos or the like and on the other hand material like worksheets for a certain topic could be uploaded as well. Such a page could exist during the whole school year and support students to learn and repeat new grammar. If a new grammatical feature has been introduced, the teacher could ask a small group of students to update the grammar homepage. It goes withoput saying that the teacher has to make sure that the content added by the students is correct and that he also has to add material there if necessary. Have a look at my chapter "Additional Material" and click on the "Learn English Blog" if you want to see how it could look like (That webpage is a blog which has not been created by students!).
All in all, Weebly is a free tool with which you can realize different intentions. It diversifies the variety of tools you use in class and students might be motivated by working on their own products which will be made public afterwards.
Creating a website offers so many opportunities, not only regarding the choice of possible contents, or teaching aims, but also regarding the activation of the students! I am sure that Weebly will definitely be a "new media tool" in my classroom in the future!
In the subchapter Geography on Weebly I will show you a Weebly page I set up on a topic related to geography.
added: November 13, 2010
