Websites: Wix, Weebly, and Google Sites! Oh My!

I love building websites! I have prior experience using Wix, Weebly, Smore, Google Sites, and even my own website designed from scratch in Photoshop and assembled in Dreamweaver.  Right now, I am leaning towards using Weebly because although I know how to design a web page from scratch, I have time constraints that, as a professional, I have to deal with.  My free time is limited, so I need to be efficient with my choices.

Lord Selkirk School Library
This library connects a school-wide adventure theme into the library as well as the library's website.  The greenery in the header matches the library photo, which is a display of African safari animals and books. I thought the background of this website was particularly effective at matching a theme without being over-the-top.  This website is designed for both parents and students, so while the elements are fun, there is enough white space to make the site clear and useful. The font colors match the other colors used in the website.  The fonts, however, are from different families, which seems to be an oversight rather than a design choice.  I am not a huge fan of the two columns underneath the picture.  I don't know if there is enough information that necessitates two columns of equal size.  I wonder how this would look with a big/small combination.

Lamoille Union Middle and High School
While I don't care for the overall "look" of this website, I have to applaud the librarians' creative ideas and social media integration.  Many of the websites I've looked at today are very static and boring, but this one is dynamic and full of life.  When I read this Wix website, I wanted to visit this library and  meet these librarians.  For me, this is a great place to let my creativity explode, and for my website, I would like to use similar ideas but different visual techniques.    

Audio Files and Podcasts

HauntingVisionStock (Photographer). DeviantArt.com. Vintage Little Girl 2 [Web Photo]. 2009 November 2.  CC By 3.0. 

Blabberize
Blabberize combines photos with audio files.  Creators can place a "mouth" on any photo to create a talking effect.  I would like to use this in my classroom for students to add their own voice to art inspired writing.  I need to make the mouth move a little more on my Blabberize, but I have had a family emergency today, so I didn't have a chance to tweak it as much as I would like.

Vocaroo
Vocaroo has two qualities that appeal to me: simplicity and embed-ability.  I love resources that require no special logins, passwords, or email addresses.  It's much easier for students to use, and students can focus more on what they are recording rather than how to use the software.  Sharing recording online without going through a conversion process is also very appealing for classroom teachers.  I enjoy being able to easily embed the audio into my class blog. I might have students record themselves reading their own writing and an editing technique.  After the recording, they can listen to their recording while reading their drafts, allowing their ears to pick up on mistakes the eyes may have overlooked.

AudioPal
AudioPal is similar to other audio tools I have used in the past where users can record themselves by computer, phone, or even text-to-speech, which always sounds a little unnatural to me. To retrieve your recording, you have to have an email address, which can be problematic to use in schools. However, once emailed, the file can be embedded into a website such as this blog.  During March Madness, I could create an interactive website/tournament bracket where students could create their own mini-book talks and vote for their favorite books.

Podcasts
I explored TechTalk4Teachers, which is designed to help K-college level teachers keep up with latest technologies in their classrooms. The website features links to blogs, audio podcasts, and video podcasts.  There really is a little bit of everything. As I browsed, I found a topic that is very timely for this time of the school year- Digital Organization!  I am a little obsessed with organization, constantly trying and experimenting to find the right system that will work for me.  This year in particular I have felt a true need to improve my organization, so I decided to give this podcast a try.  Here are a few tips the author shared.

• Avoid sub-folders in sub-folders in sub-folders.  Try not to have file paths longer than three or four folders deep.  
• 3-2-1 Back-up Rule: 3 copies of anything you care about using 2 different formats and 1 off-site back-up.  
• Organize folders first by year and then by course number/committee/etc.  If you organize your files by school year, you can copy and paste files from one school year folder to the next.If you include a reflection file inside your school year folder, you will already have a list of what worked well in the lesson and what improvements you would like to make.  In the new school year folder, you can then delete anything you don't need without the fear of completing losing a record of what you completed in previous school years.

Infographics

Gdsdigital (Photographer).  Flickr: Creative Commons (2010, April 26).  Record Breaking Tornados [Web Photo]. CC BY-ND 2.0 (no changes).

I had a difficult time trying to find an infographic that wasn't too busy.  Even this one has a lot going on within the picture, but I thought the information was at least organized in a neat and orderly way. The graphic designer used a high quality photo that bleeds to the edge of the frame.  I like chart on the left; it shows the amount of damage by storm with the smaller numbers on the bottom and the larger numbers on the top.  The circles increase in size creating a tornado shape.  Very creative!  The dark background contrasts nicely with the white font.  The sans-serif font is consistent throughout the graphic.  The headings are simply a bold version of the same font as the text. The title of the graphic is aligned left on the top line, which is a logical location when reading from left to right.  The arrangement of the other graphics surround the tornado, but in an orderly fashion.  The middle column graphics are aligned left and graphics in the right column are all aligned to the right.  This creates a sense of a order in what could potentially be a messy graphic. 

Below, you will see the infographic I created.  My advanced English students participate in the Virginia Readers' Choice award selection, so I created a graphic that lists the last three winning books.  I used Piktochart to create it.  Of the three tools, this one I found it the easiest to use.

Piktochart: This was my favorite of the three sandbox tools.  I had no problem customizing my design to fit my needs rather than trying to make my idea fit their design.  There were plenty of themes and photos to fit my needs.  The graphic assembled quickly, too, which is always a plus for me.

Easel.ly: I also liked this website, too! I found it very easy to use and easy to create customizations.  I liked Piktochart more because it had more graphics built in.  I could see myself using Easel.ly with my students, too.

Canva: Canva did not work well in my Chrome browser, so that was an immediate turn-off for me. I gave the application another chance in another browser.  I thought the layouts were very creative and beautiful, but they weren't easy to customize.  At one point, I became frustrated because I needed a plain text box, and I couldn't find one.  I like how the application allows the user to build other graphics besides infographics.  

Creative Commons and Public Domain Photos

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). There's No Place Like The Death Star [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (no changes made).

Hancock, J. (Photographer). Flickr: Creative Commons (2014, July 22). 

          The New Girl [Web Photo]. CC by 2.0 (original changed to 

          trading card).

On Big Huge Labs, I used the Trading Card creator to make a trading card for a fictional character. This would be a fun project for students when we are studying characterization.  We could also create an entire set of cards that represented the characters, setting, conflicts, and themes of our stories or novels.  Big Huge Labs also has a Magazine Cover creator that I could use with my students to personalize covers for our writing portfolios. Finally, I enjoyed playing around with the FX filters.  I was able to convert a photograph to drawing students could actually color on paper.  

ImageChef: This website has many fun framing options.  I could easily see myself using this to create writing prompt graphics for my students.  Students could use these to create exit tickets.  I especially liked the beach frame and Grumpy Cat.

Tuxpi: I am going to use this website with my students next week.  We are in the middle of creating our writing portfolios where we are publishing the best pieces of our writing from the school year to put in a special booklet to carry home.  My middle school students will enjoy all of the theming options for their photos!

Design Matters and Type Choices

Hello everyone! Welcome to my blog, the Sunny Side of Life.  I decided to name my blog after song lyrics from one of my favorite songs, "Look for the Silver Lining," which is also featured in my Tagxedo. For the past eleven years, I have been teaching 6th grade English at Short Pump Middle School in Henrico County.  While I love my job and my students, my passions are changing.  My favorite part of the day is reading picture books to my two year old daughter at bed time. I am very interested in becoming an elementary school librarian. I am a natural optimist who loves old movies, picture books, sewing,and graphic design.

Design Matters
For my blog, I tried to create a sense of balance. I created a dark wooden background that would contrast with the light background where my text is placed. I love to decorate, and my designer eye is always drawn to light text on dark backgrounds; however, I recognize how hard that can be on a user's eyes when reading lengthy text, so, I am practicing restraint and keeping my focus on communication rather than decoration. In my blog's banner, I wanted to create a visual representation of my personality so visitors would get a sense of who I am in one, short glance. I selected a sunflower field as my background to represent optimism and used a public domain photo of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz to symbolize my love of classic children's literature. I added the blue banner behind my text so my title would be easier to read.  All three of these elements feature the same color blue (#65b0f2), which I also included in my Tagxedo as well.

Type Choices
My web banner features two different styles of text from two different families.  For my title, I wanted to grab readers' attention, so I used a larger font called Phosphate Inline.  My title features all capital letters, but this will be the only place I use all caps on my blog. I also spaced the letters out a little more on my blog so it would be easier to read.  The second group uses the font BrushScriptSTD, which is a script font. This line is not as important as the title, and I used the script font for decorative purposes only.  The font is small so as not to pull attention away from the title.  The primary text of my blog is Trebuchet, a sans-serif font, which our text book recommended for computer screens.