In
social studies a technology that can be extremely useful is websites such as
weebly.com. Websites like this allow students to have access to building their own
website to show how well they understand content that they are learning in
class. Someone can easily go to weebly.com and sign up to start building a
page. Students can make their own profile or students can use their school
email and their email password to build their profile. Once the profile is
built they can set up their own URL to share with the teacher and turn in their
assignment. If the students use a subdomain of weebly that ends in .weebly.com
it is free to use. After the profile is set and the URL is found the students
can choose a theme to have on their website. The themes include pictures and
words on the website that would need to be replaced. When the students have
completed their website they can publish the website and the teacher can then
check the assignments online. The students then have a product that is
published online and they can go look up the website on any device even if it
is a weebly.com URL.
What
I find interesting about this type of assignment is that it allows the students
to build something that isn’t an essay or a paper. They can still meet the
learning targets of making an argument and conducting research to support a
claim. Most students will think that it is kind of fun to build a website of their
own even as it is becoming more likely for people to easily build websites for
anyone to see. In my teaching practice I hope to use this website in at least
one assignment per year so that students can have experience and exposure to
building a website of their own. I hope that while doing this I can assess what
the students in my class know and understand, and I can assess how well the
students can write to support a claim without the added stress and boringness
of writing an essay. What surprised me about this website is the ease of use of
weebly.com. Once you have the website established it is easy to delete things
that you don’t want and to add things that you want to add. There is a tool bar
on the left hand side that you click and drag things that you want to add. If
you want to add a picture you click and drag the image icon then copy and paste
the picture into the block. It is easily something that Middle school students
can work with an complete an assignment using this online tool.
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