Which site to use?

Final Vision Project Contents

One of the main decision for my final vision project is deciding on which platform, application, or site to build my own Learning Commons website that is user friendly, budget friendly, and administrator/district approved.  There is the possibility that a particular school district might already have a predesigned website template that is used by all LCs.

I have created many free websites for my sons’ classroom teachers in the States and sports teams in both countries using easy predesigned templates from a commercial photo website company called, "Shutterfly."”  Unfortunately, it would be difficult to use this site for my LC’s website as there are already predetermined tabs and a set format.

Screen shot of one of the websites that I created for my son's class.

There were 3 sources that I inquired about to weigh my options. 

• One source was looking at the LC websites that I liked in the Final Vision Project Scope as well as online.  These websites were built with Google sites, Wix, Wordpress, or Office 365.

• Second source was inquiring on-line recommendations to build a LC site.  Some of the articles that I read were:

         Top 10 Sties for Creating a Wiki by David Kapuler.  (2011).  Tech and Learning.  Retrieved

          from http://www.techlearning.com/default.aspx?tabid=100&entryid=583

          Steele, Howard. (2017).  How to Create a School or a Teacher Website by Yourself.  Superb

          Website Builders.  Retrieved from https://superbwebsitebuilders.com/schools-and-teachers/

• Third source was my son in Grade 8 who has taking summer camps on webpage design.    One of his suggestions was Google site builders but there is a storage limitation of 50 gigabytes available for all Google products used such as Gmail, drive… Other suggestions were Wikispace or Weebly since they both can do websites and blogs.  He mentioned that there were watermarks on the sites and they can be removed by paying for the domain.  He liked Wikis better because he thought the format is better, interfaces are handy, templates are available or you can build from scratch.  Weebly, he said, had to be built from scratch and was the like the Scratch program where you have to drag and drop.

In the end, I chose Google sites to build my preliminary LC website.  The main reasons are:

• familiarity with Google interfaces and products
• typically user friendly
• free and updated
• good online tutorials on YouTube and Google support

Since I am a visual learner, here are a few of the tutorials that I watched to help build my site:

MrMattperreault.  (2017).  How to make a Website with the New Google Sites.  [YouTube].  Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxAqVT05WRY

EllingtonMath. (2014).  How to make a Google Site for Teachers.  [YouTube].  Retrieved from  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2EyvTv8HM8

Teacher’s Tech. (2016).  How to use the New Google Sites - Tutorial

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm8nEq4jVJg