Week 3

This week I decided to use Weebly as the platform for my website.  There were several factors in this decision.  First, since Dr. Gibson will be using Weebly for her website, it allows for me to easily ask her questions and watch as her website changes.  Secondly, Wix does not easily change from one layout/format to another so if I decided I didn't like my website later, I would have to start over from scratch.  With Weebly, I can easily rearrange things and change the way it looks later.  That is great as I change classes and content each year.  Thirdly, I got on the Wix and Weebly editing pages and found that Weebly was pretty easy to use.

After choosing a platform, I completed the About and Contact Me pages.  I am not sold on if I like the background of my page, but I do find green a calming color.  I don't know if I should add more to my About page.  I don't know how much information I want out there about me, but the page looks rather blank.  Also I struggled with finding a picture of my alone.  So often I am the one taking the picture or I am with either my husband or baby in a picture.  I guess the one I have will do for now even though there is a large pool in the background.  I guess it emphasizes my hidden love for swimming.

Social bookmarking sites still remain to be a bit of a puzzle to me.  When I like a website, I just tend to favorite it on my browser and if I want to use it on another computer, just email the link to myself.  I guess that is a little archaic in these days when you can link it on a website and then access that website later.  Which one is more work?  That is undecided for now.  I guess an advantage of social bookmarking sites is the social part of it and being able to share your sites with others.  This would probably work really well in the world of education, but I am sure that most of my peers have never used these sites.

I really liked thinking about whether websites are good resources or not.  I have run across tons of sites that my kids will use as resources when they write papers that have zero credibility.  I am looking forward to teaching about how to evaluate a website the next time we do a research based writing project.  Kids are just notorious for searching on Google and using the first site that comes up and when I tell them they need to dig deeper, they just don't get it.