Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

I’m always on the look-out for easy ways that my students can display their work online. 

One easy way (for them!) is, since many of the Web 2.0 applications they use have an “Email to a Friend” feature, to just email it to me and I post it on my Examples of Student Work page.   Of course, that ends up creating more work for me.  Plus, not all of the Web 2.0 sites have that email feature.

I used to have all my students, both English Language Learners and mainstream, use a site called YourDraft to post their work, and I would then link each of their “YourDrafts” to my website.  It’s very easy to use.  However, it’s also easy for mischievous students to “play around” with the work of others.  That problem primarily occurred with students from other classes doing the “playing around.”

For Beginning English Language Learners, I’ve found Jottit to be the easiest and most secure site to use.  Unfortunately, though, you can only post links there and not images.

I’ve found Tumblr to be the easiest and best way for Early Intermediate and above English Language Learners and for mainstream students to post links and images.  However, for some reason our School District’s  content filters are having a hard time allowing complete access to the site.  District staff say it should be fixed by mid-January, and I have no doubt that they’re trying their best (they’ve been very supportive of all the technology-related work we’ve been doing at our school), but you never know with these things.

So I’ve been trying to figure out a back-up plan in case the Tumblr problem doesn’t get “fixed” soon.

I just learned about a start-up called Meemi.  Even though I don’t use Twitter, it seems to be sort of similar, though you can also post images and video.  Reviews I’ve read about the site (I just googled “Meemi”) say you can limit who can view your posts and leave a comment, but I can’t figure out how to do that.  I’ve emailed that question to the site, but haven’t heard back from them.

If you can indeed limit who can leave comments on your “Meemi,” then this might be a viable option if District staff can’t get us access to Tumblr.

If you’re interested, here is my Meemi that took all of two minutes to create.

Be sure to click on “English” at the upper right-hand corner of the screen when you go to Meemi — unless you understand Italian…

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