Making a Weebly Website

In this hands-on session participants will learn how to make their own mobile friendly websites using Weebly, a free and intuitive website development tool.

We will discuss how to integrate a class website into instruction and how learners can develop their digital literacy skills while sharing their writing and images on a website of their own.  

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Exercise 1: What can you do with a website?

Go to at least two of the websites below. What are some things you like and don't like about these websites?  Are there any aspects of these websites you would like to have on your website? List at least seven purposes of these websites.​

1. http://umdesol.weebly.com/
2. http://mrnystudent.weebly.com/
3. http://cnapolitano.weebly.com/
4. http://slcceportfolio.weebly.com/
5. http://nelightful.weebly.com/

Padlet

Exercise 2: Sitemap for an Adult Education Instructor

Your project is to create a sitemap for a website. Your client is an Adult Education Instructor, in New York City. You have 10 minutes to ask the client a few questions about her/his goals for the website then:

1. Write down each element on the post-it-notes provided
2. Move the post-it-notes around to categorize the information into groups
3. Compile the information into various tabs
4. Once you are happy with the organization, draw up a final version 

Padlet

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Exercise 3: Building Your Weebly Website

Website Ideas

1. Website with a page for each class you teach
2. 5 great things to do in NYC (what, where, when, who, how)
3. What you did last summer (a place you went, where you stayed, how your traveled)
4. A book you would recommend (background info, the author, your review, movie trailer)
5. All about a hobby 

Finding Public Domain Images

• Take your own photos
• 5 Good Places for Students to Find Public Domain Images
• Flickr Creative Commons https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
• Advanced Google Image Search https://www.google.com/advanced_image_search
• https://pixabay.com/
• http://www.imagesource.com/royalty-free
• http://www.gettyimages.com/creative-images/royaltyfree

Web Design

• 1990’s Web Design http://blog.ambitious.me/2012/04/how-websites-looked-like-in-the-1990s/
• Make any website look like 1990’s http://www.wonder-tonic.com/geocitiesizer/
• Good Design http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/01/10-principles-of-effective-web-design/ 
• User Experience Design https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_experience_design
• Why Aesthetics Matter to Learning https://www.td.org/Publications/Blogs/Learning-Technologies-Blog/2015/04/Why-Aesthetics-Matter-to-Learning

Organizing Website Content

• Organizing website content (Information Architecture) https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/03/starting-out-organized-website-content-planning-the-right-way/
• Creating a Website Outline and Site Diagram (video)  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umqojkqaTck

Planning Your Website

1. Map out the content (aim for 3-5 pages for today).  Think about what kind of theme would work best? Where should the tabs go?
2. Make a folder for your website
3. Find and download images to go with your content and put them in a folder labeled Images
4. Find websites and videos you’d like to link to and save links in a document labeled Links
5. Write content in Notepad or Word

Weebly Tutorials

• How to do everything http://hc.weebly.com/hc/en-us/categories/200044378-How-to-Do-Everything
• Video Tutorials https://www.youtube.com/user/weebly

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Using weebly from Nell Eckersley