Teachers First - Thinking Teachers Teaching Thinkers

General profile:
Weebly is a web site creation tool that includes the ability to create blogs. The education area of Weebly allows a teacher to register up to 40 students without email. Each student can, in turn, create a blog. Beyond that, you must pay for additional students or earn premium status by referring other teachers to Weebly.

NOTE: a BLOG is a PAGE within a Weebly SITE. Class site/blog and moderation/supervision of student sites are managed from teacher log in. Students manage own SITE and BLOG from individual logins.  Teachers may want each student to make a home page on his/her site with a blog as a subpage. The home page allows a student to share interests, etc. (making safe choices, of course). Students can have an additional 3 pages to add for projects, portfolio, etc. later during the year.

The user interface is drag-and-drop style, allowing you to add multimedia elements to your pages easily.  Each student account permits up to 5 pages, one of which can be a “blog.” Since the page and blog creation must be done one at a time (from the student login), this is not the simplest tool for younger students. Once student blogs are created, tools to moderate comments and establish settings for all student blogs appear in the teacher “My Students” administration panel. Teachers first create their own login, create a class (or classes), then add students to each class. Students log in from a different url (http://students.weebly.com). This url shows on your students page if you forget it!

Overall: Visually attractive, flexible tool for upper elementary to high school. Has enough teacher controls for most teachers. Limited number of students is the biggest drawback. Allows full integration of the media that today’s students want to use. These features may require some specific class policies and consequences, but students will learn using authentic tools.

Page by page password option is a premium feature ($). Password allows access to entire class site.

My Sites> click to edit the site. Click “Design” tab at top to choose a theme.

Once logged in as teacher, create class(es), then add students.

No bulk student registration. Up to 40 students with free account. More if you “refer” other teachers to Weebly. Each student gets one site with 5 pages. A blog counts as one page. No student email required to register students.  Student passwords are readily available for teacher viewing/change.

My students>Class Settings> Student blog comments. Choose publish immediately or hold for moderation.

One setting for ALL student blogs, so you cannot release control individually.

custom urls

Flickr image option

media tools

Each blog can have a subdomain of Weebly or defaults to a numerical url. Set a policy for what you want students to use as their url. Teachers can see all student urls from My Students page.

Teacher can check a box for whether or not students can search for Flickr images from within their editing tools (in Class Settings)

In sidebar of each blog by default.

In context help in many areas. Roll your mouse over things for explanations. An FAQ page explains most basics a teacher needs.

Other comments:

In the process of this tool review, TeachersFirst made a quick sample of one way you could set up your class site, a teacher blog, and links to your students’ blogs. See it here.