Thursday, August 1, 2013

Organising online resources with Weebly


Do your links get lost in the land of many bookmarks?  

We can sift through 50 bookmark folders to find the link we need, but that's not so quick or easy for young children ... and with so many online educational resources available, the bookmarks tab soon overflows.  To rescue our links I created a Weebly website ... it's a fun way to round up the numerous online resources my children have access to. 


Here's what I did:
*  Named our Weebly site.
*  Chose a basic layout, background picture and style from the free options.
*  Organised our online resources by subject, using drop-down menus and hyperlinks.  
*  Added a text box with ideas of fun things to do and other reminders, easily updated.
*  Made the final menu (on the dashboard) a list without links ... just text to remind us of other apps we use on the computer.  
 *  Made a card for the children with usernames and passwords for sites which require special access.

The initial setup took me a few hours, but it now saves us time and allows the children to use the computer more independently.  

Easy to access:
I made our Weebly page super-easy to find by creating a shortcut tab on my Safari browser bar ... simply clicking the word 'KIDS'  takes us straight to our Weebly page.  One happy customer said, "I love it!  You can easily get to links you'd otherwise have to research and you could accidentally get to a website where you buy something!"


Keeping the page up to date:
I created a bookmark folder labelled "Add to Weebly".  Any time I see something worth adding, I save a bookmark in that folder, then once a month or so (or as needed) I edit our Weebly site to add new links, write ideas and reminders.  I gave myself a shortcut tab to access the Weebly editing page so I'd have no reason to avoid this task (if you have sharp eyes you may see it in my grey bookmarks bar, 'Weebly V')!

Your turn:
If you'd like to create a Weebly website for your children, check out Suji's excellent how-to guide which inspired me to do this last year.  Let your own Weebly adventure begin.

Have fun and let me know how it goes!

3 comments:

  1. I created one of these for Nathan after you posted about it last time, and I'm just setting up one for the girls. Ours are not nearly so detailed as yours (very inspiring!) and you've inspired me to set ours up better and with more links. You look like you have loads of great sites you use- do you have a list of them somewhere that you'd like to share? We bought the kids a laptop where you can have a keyboard and mouse or unclip it and use the screen like an iPad, so I'm looking for more sites for them to use with it.

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  2. You're so organised! It looks great.

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  3. Thanks Meg and Kez! I'm about to add more links to our page ... hopefully by early next week. I'm still working out how the Weebly editor works, and deciding how to add pages specific to the interests of each child (rocks & minerals, history, motorbikes) because we now have several disorganised bookmark folders full of great links for ongoing projects & research. I may start additional blogs for that purpose, similar to the one Mel shared on the local group, with a little guidance regarding watch & do in some semblance of order.

    Meg, the Weebly site is the main place I store links. You're welcome to visit our page, click on links you like and copy the urls to your own pages. That was the tedious part of setting up. I don't keep a list elsewhere because I'd just lose it, or wouldn't keep it up to date! I'm a list maker with too many lists and too many safe places to keep them ... this way seems a little safer at present ;)

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