Many people are into Wiki, many are doing Blogger, some are into easy web designing programs like Webnode and Weebly. So which do you do use with your students? It all depends on what reasons you want to start putting up your students work on the internet. I have done Blogs with my students using Blogger, have helped teachers with their Wikis, used Facebook for e-portfolios for student work on Illustrator and Photoshop, and now I'm trying Weebly with my Grade 8 students for e-portfolios and ease of marking. So which ones do I recommend? I show a number of them to the teacher and let them decide. It may take some time but in the end they can do their own comparisons and take responsibility for their own choices.
The following are some advantages and disadvantages of each program for you to consider before you make your own choice. These are a few that I have come across or thought of. I hope this helps you
Advantages
|
Disadvantages
|
Facebook
|
|
·
Great for using the photo albums
·
Students can “Poke” you when they add
something to their photo albums.
·
The program gets the other person’s comments
on your desktop when they have added something.
·
Great for peer assessment, students all become
friends and can comment on each others
work.
·
Easy for the teacher to assess with comments,
for instant feedback without giving a mark.
·
Can add videos if doing animation in your
classroom.
·
Security is good, to keep others out.
·
Parents can become Friends so they can check
out their own child’s work.
|
·
Additions are not sortable
·
Hard to search what was done.
·
When you have 30 or more students doing work
and adding to their desktop, your desktop gets flooded.
·
Need to have a YouTube channel to add videos.
·
Cannot embed other Web 2.0 programs (ie
Glogster, Prezi, etc) in Facebook.
·
Need to watch student’s friends, sometimes
they invite their friends and they
don’t watch their security, so their “desktop” gets crowded if garbage.
·
Students add games to their account so they can play online during
class time. It also adds to the
teacher’s desktop.
·
Students can hide through security what they
are doing.
|
Webnode
|
|
·
Free
·
Easy to set up and use.
·
Can be individualized with your own pictures,
colors, etc.
·
Many different Templates and different pages
you can put into your Webnode.
·
Has stats you can see.
·
Has RSS feed
·
Has different types of pages you can choose
including a Portfolio section.
·
Can embed any other program using the HTML
code, like YouTube, Prezi, Glogster, etc.
·
Can have more then one web site on your
account.
·
Can have as many pages as you want.
·
Many designs that are free.
·
Easy to use and self explanatory.
·
Can Tweet anything on the page.
·
Has many gadgets you can add to your web page,
ie poll, codes, different videos from different web sites (educational
sites).
·
Can have a list of student sites to your list.
|
·
To embed you need to know some HTML coding.
·
Does not feed in well with Blogger “Blog
lists”.
·
Does not appear well if you use the RSS feed for
a newspaper program like “paperli”.
·
Cannot lock it down.
|
Weebly
|
|
·
Free
·
Easy to set up and use.
·
Has RSS feed
·
Has a page for a blog.
·
You have 5 pages and as many photos as you
want.
·
Easy to add in columns with picture on one
side and a write-up on the other side.
·
Can embed any other program with easy, a copy
and a paste.
·
Easy to embed a video
·
Instantaneous so there is no need to wait for
a publisher to create a new edition or update information
·
Teacher creates the account for all students,
giving them individual user names and passwords.
·
Teacher has access to all accounts, so it’s
easy to assess as well
·
Can set it up so that you cannot see the site
unless you have a password to get on the site.
|
·
When you embed other programs sometimes they
affect the running of the program on the Internet. An example is “Prezi” will freeze your
Weebly home page.
·
Open to SPAM and Vandalism if not managed
properly. There are easy ways to restore a page however, and on WikiEducator
you must be logged in to edit pages so this reduces vandalism by automated
spam bots.
·
Only get 40 accounts to set up. So if you want more, you either pay or get
a colleague to join and this gives you more accounts for students.
·
Limit of size of a photo.
|
Wikis
|
|
·
Free
·
Easy to set up and use.
·
Some wikis allow for a lot of formatting.
·
Can use this program to collaborate – giving
control of different pages to different users.
·
Can be password protected.
·
Can check to see when the last update of the
Wiki was.
·
Has RSS feed
·
Give permission to anyone that you want to
have access to edit
·
Wikis are instantaneous so there is no need to
wait for a publisher to create a new edition or update information
·
People located in different parts of the world
can work on the same document
·
The wiki software keeps track of every edit
made and it's a simple process to revert back to a previous version of an
article. All the drafts of a document
are saved. If a team of people have altered a document several times
and feel that using the original introduction would now work better than the
revised version, they can easily go back and retrieve the original.
·
Some of the Gadgets you can add to your Wiki
are very interactive, and easy to do.
·
Has Stats.
|
·
Does not feed in well with Blogger “Blog lists”.
·
Does not appear well if you use the RSS feed
for a newspaper program like “paperli”.
·
Not to crazy about the look of the Wiki.
·
Need to know some HTML coding if you wish to
embed some programs.
·
Wikis do make it easy for several people to
brainstorm and collaborate on projects by adding content to a group website,
but if no one is keeping tabs on the content, it can get pretty
confusing.
·
Although this program is user-friendly, it
doesn’t look like it.
|
Blogger
|
|
·
Free
·
Easy to set up – step by step, easy to use.
·
Can be individualized.
·
Create your own design.
·
Can save drafts of post and work on it later.
·
Has a number of apps you can use with an
IPads.
·
The App lets you take pictures with your IPad
and then put it up on your Blog
·
Teacher can have a “Blog list” of students
blogs and this makes it easier to mark.
·
Instantaneous so there is no need to wait for
a publisher to create a new edition or update information
·
The “Blog list” can be set up so that when
students add something to their blog the blog address goes up to the top of
the list, and you can see the date of when it was added.
·
Can embed anything in your Blog.
·
They can add their own blog list
·
Easy to embed a poll, a video from your
YouTube account.
·
Once you set up Blogger, you have a gmail
account and a GoogleDoc account as well.
Easy to embed all together.
·
Parents can follow their own child’s work, see
what is happening in the class.
·
Easy to make a homework list or embed a
Twitter school account for tweeting homework.
·
You can add pages to your blog for different
subject areas.
|
·
There is a limited number of setups for the
template but you can change the look of it.
Does take some time to set the template. You may lose the kids in the initial setup
so give yourself and the students time to play with the look of it.
·
|
No comments:
Post a Comment
Thank you for your comment. I will be checking my comments every week.