Larry Ferlazzo’s Websites of the Day…

Perhaps others are clearer about the difference these days between a website and a blog, but it seems to me the boundary lines are pretty blurry.

For students, a number of blog applications seem very easy to use and work well in my classes. You can find more information about these tools on these specific “The Best…” lists:

The Best Places Where Students Can Write Online

The Best Sites For Students To Easily Create & Display Online Projects

Part Two Of The Best Sites For Students To Easily Create & Display Online Projects

Visually, however, I can see how a website might offer more creative possibilities.  So in this list I’ll share my picks for The Best Ways For Students Or Teachers To Create A Website.

Except for one tool I’ll write about, I didn’t include any that would not allow you to grab images directly off the web for inclusion on the website.  This list is focused on tools accessible for English Language Learners and non-tech-savvy computer users, and that ability, I believe, is an essential one for those two groups.  The other features also had to be very easy to use.  Finally, the service had to be offered free-of-charge.

Here are my choices, though not listed in any particular order of preference.  Also, of course, even though I listed some sites under “Students,” I think a teacher could also find them useful.:

FOR STUDENTS:

Webon appears to be one of the easiest website-builder I’ve come across. It’s very easy to grab images off the web and write captions. One of its features that I like a lot is that your images automatically become a slideshow. It doesn’t have all the bells and whistles that other slideshow creators have, but it seems to work well enough. It’s an excellent place for students to display their oneline work.

Notaland is also very easy to use.

Jottit is an extraordinarily simple and easy way to create a webpage.  All you do is start typing — you don’t even have to register.  You can create a password that you, or anyone else you want to be able to write in it, can use, and then you’re given your own url.  You can’t just copy and paste images.  However, you can embed objects.

Rombla gets an honorable mention. It’s not quite as easy to use as the ones I’ve already mentioned, but it’s pretty close.

Hipero bills itself as “The easiest Free Website Builder ever!”  I don’t know if that’s accurate, but it is, indeed, pretty easy to use.

FOR TEACHERS:

Wix is a fairly easy site that lets you use Flash to create a website or content that you would like to embed into a website or a blog. The final product can look pretty neat. There’s so much you can create that I think it would be a little too overwhelming to English Language Learners. I also suspect that my mainstream students would would want to spend far too much time using it to make their creations look cool and spend less time on the actual content. However, teachers, I think, might want to use it to create content their students would then access.

Yola is another website-building application and seems very similar to Wix, but appears to be just a little less complicated to use.

Zunal is a tool designed for teachers to easily create their own websites. The interface is clean, simple, and it’s free.

Langwitches speaks very highly of using Netvibes for creating a classroom webpage. The post includes screenshots.

As always, feedback is welcome.

If you found this post useful, you might want to look at previous “The Best…” lists and also consider subscribing to this blog for free.

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