Weebly

I was first introduced to Weebly a few years ago while I was working on my master's degree. I didn't see anything special and to be honest with you, I really didn't spend much time with it. I have since rediscovered Weebly and am thoroughly impressed with the updates and features.
Here is a link to a site I made just playing with some of the things available: Adventures with Rose

One of the nicest things about working with Weebly is the ease of adding elements. A simple drag and drop adds an element and the directions to upload pictures or add text is very easy to do. I did not find changing, adding, rearranging elements to be frustrating at all. With the free account, you do have some limitations and this is the one thing that does frustrate me. For instance, you are not able to upload videos. Now you can link or embed them if they are hosted on YouTube, TeacherTube or Vimeo. All fine and good, but I really wish you could upload even short videos without upgrading to the Pro account. I guess that is one of the trade offs you make for all the other really cool things about it. Audio is also only under the Pro account.

Getting a Pro account is pretty easy though and if you can get 5 teachers to sign up using your reference code you are upgraded to Pro for free. Not a bad deal and actually the price for the Pro is very reasonable. Now why go to Pro? Well you get more student accounts. And this is where Weebly really has a nice advantage over other websites. You can created classes and each student can create their own website. You can make the class sites public or private that can only be accessed with a password. What a great place for your students to publish their writings or create a digital portfolio. But you also don't have to worry about strangers lurking about your classes websites. No email address is needed for the student accounts. If your students are under 13 you do need to get parent permission to use the site. There are many sample blogging parent consent letters out on the web, so look around and adapt one for your situation. And hey, if you now think you want to try it, and you are feeling generous, why not use this link and help me get that Pro account? http://education.weebly.com/referral.php?oTOXFMo3ZIAb897n

So will I switch and use Weebly with my students? I will probably try this with at least one class. I am moving to a new school and they will be BYOD in the coming school year. This could be just the thing to make my class ROCK!

ThingLink

I have admitted I am not much for Twitter, but I will have to go on and reTweet this link out. I read about ThingLink on two different websites this morning so I had to check it out. ThingLink is great! I see so much use for the classroom, whether by a teacher and students or teacher alone. You do need an email to use, but I have not seen a Privacy Policy nor do I see anything in Terms of Service about under age 13. Someone correct me if you do, please.

Basically, ThingLink lets you upload pictures and tag them. You can then share with a link or embed the image. I created one and then put it on my class wiki. One of the tags in the image is a link to a website with more information for my students. This would be great to use in foreign language classes labeling things with the translations. Anything where you could label something- maps, artwork, parts of speech, the list is endless. Love it! Here is an example on the parts of speech.


Richard Byrne apparently talked about this a month ago (how did I miss it?!) and has a great tutorial/video about creating the images. Larry Ferlazzo also makes a post on ThingLink.

Definitely a site worth exploring. Below is the one I created for my class wiki.