Week #3 548 Journal

Where I Went/What I Did:

     The first thing I did this week was explore some social bookmarking sites.  I have never used one of these sites before so I wanted to view all my options.  I started out using the site diigo because I found it very user friendly.  After I creating my account at diigo I began researching informational sites for teachers and students to bookmark.  I bookmarked some that I already use in my classroom, but I was also able to find some new ones as well.  One new one that I really liked was WatchKnowLearn.  This website was full of free educational videos for all ages.  I had never seen this site before, but it will be one that I will use in my classroom in the future.  After I had created my diigo account I then read about the site eduClipper which was very similar to Pinterest.  I began playing on it and decided I liked it much better than diigo.  I was able to create a board for this class and share it easy with others.  On the diigo site I was having a hard time figuring out how to share my bookmarks with others.  Another reason I liked eduClipper better was that it saved a thumbnail of each website so this helped me remember what was on each one.  This site also offered the option of adding a class and assignments for a class.  I could see this being very beneficial for older students especially.
     After creating my social bookmarking site I went and created a Weebly account to begin working on my website.  I really like the Weebly site because it makes creating a website so easy. I began working on the design and color scheme that I wanted to use on my site.

What I Learned:
   
     This week I learned much about how to evaluate web sites that I visit.  In the technology driven world that we live in today it important to realize that anyone can add content to the web.  So we have to be very careful in what we believe.  In the reading Evaluating Websites it states that one way to evaluate a site is to look at where the sites live.  For example the extension .edu means that the site is from an educational institution.  Another example of an extension is .gov which means the site is from a government agency.  Another way to evaluate a site is to look to see how current the information is.  When were the links on the site last up date or are any of the links dead?  It is also good to look at copyright dates to see if it is a site that someone updates on a regular basis.  
    This week I also leared about social bookmarking sites and how wonderful they are.  I always bookmark sites to my computer at school but the problem was when I was at home I did have those same sites safed on my laptop.  With the social bookmarking sites I am able to save these sites and acces them from anywhere.
   

What I Decided About My Website:

     Once I decided on using Weebly as the my site creator I began to design some of my pages.  I decided that I wanted to make some changes to my site from my original thought on my wireframe.  On my wireframe I put too many buttons/tabs on my homepage.  I have now decided that I don't want all those buttons.  I only want the following buttons: home, parents, students, and class news.  This seems much more organized to me once I went back and looked at it.  This week I also completed my About Me page where I gave my readers a little background information about myself.  I also created a contact page in which I added a form that my readers could complete.

My Plans for the Week:

     This week I want to spend some more time getting some of my favorite websites saved to the bookmarking site eduClipper.  This is a wonderful time saver because I can access it from any computer I am on.  I also want to continue to work on my website and get firm plan I what I want it to look like.