LCS
Google Sites
Price: Free
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Collaborative web-site building, Widgets (Google maps, calendar, docs, other apps), Templates and themes, Manage and control access, Create a template
Description: Google Sites is a web-based application that allows users to collaborate on a web site. There are free templates and website themes available, and you can customize them by changing backgrounds, colors, font, etc. You can also create a template for your own and your students and share it with the public. You can publish your site or control access to the site.
Web-based Website building tools introduced here are only ones of high quality, easy usability, and no cost -- to be most beneficial to our survey participants and other learner-centered educators. All these tools provide hosting service for free depending on amount of storage and traffic.
All these tools offer custom domain names for a fee except Google Sites, Wordpress, and Wikispaces.The descriptions of the tools are current as of December 10, 2012.
Creating Artifacts > Website
Weebly
Price: Free (Limited use*)
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Collaborative web-site building, Templates, Photo gallery, slideshow, file, audio player, video, Google maps, Flash, online poll, contact form, RSS feed reader, connect to Facebook, Website statistics
Description: Weebly is a web-based application that allows users to collaborate on a web site. There are free templates and website themes available, and you can customize them by changing backgrounds, colors, font, etc. You can publish your site, view website statistics, and connect to a Facebook page.
*A free account gives you access to the majority of the features on Weebly, plus unlimited pages, bandwidth, and storage space (with a limit of 5MB per file uploaded). For a pro account, see http://kb.weebly.com/faq-pro.html
Price: Free (Limited use*)
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Templates, Flash, Flickr gallery, Flickr search, You Tube video, MP3 player, Tweet this, Facebook like, Facebook comments, Google +1
Google gadgets including Google map, form, mailing list, appointment book
online poll, contact form, RSS feed reader
Description: Yola is a web-based application that allows users to easily create a web site. There are free templates and website themes available, and you can customize them by changing backgrounds, colors, font, etc. You can publish your site. Yola is similar to Weebly in that both are drag & drop website builders.
*A free account gives you two sites with 2GB of storage for your account (1GB of storage per site). You can upload individual files of up to 5MB each. For premium packages, see https://www.yola.com/pricing.
Comments
Please leave any suggestions on the existing tools and other resources or anything you want to share.
Please note that advertisements below are not related to our research group.
Wordpress
Price: Free
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Themes, largest pool of plugins
Description: Wordpress is a web-based application that provides a completely free website building service with the largest pool of plugins. Unlike other website building tools introduced above, it requires software package download for website building and a bit of technical skills for using plug-ins. To download software, go to http://wordpress.org/
Price: Free (Limited use*)
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Templates, gallery, media, buttons, menus, social networking features, Widgets (Community forums, Rating, Live chat, Google calendar & map, Flickr gallery, poll, contact forms, etc)
Description: Wix is a web-based application that provides flash-based website templates. Various features are available for free such as Gallery, media, buttons, menus, social networking features (Twitter Follow, Twitter Feed, Tweet this, Facebook like, Facebook comments, Google + 1) and Widgets (Community forums, Rating, Live chat, Google calendar & map, Flickr Gallery, poll, contact forms, etc), etc. You can publish your site.
*A free account gives up to 500MB of storage and up to 500MB bandwidth. For premium packages, see http://www.wix.com/upgrade/website
Wikispaces
Price: Free for Basic Plan*
Subjects: All
Grade levels: All
Features: Collaborative website building, File upload, Widgets (Videos, Calendars, Spreadsheet, Document, Online polls, Rss Feed, Chat, Slideshow, Map, Social Networking Features, etc.), Discussion & comments
Description: Wikispaces let users collaboratively create a website and allows for administration control. Various Widgets are available: limited collaborative page building, file or image upload, sharing YouTube or other videos, calendars, etc., creating discussion boards, and comments.
*Free basic plan allows 5 members for private wikis, and 0.5 GB of total storage with up to 10MB for a single file. For premium plans, see http://www.wikispaces.com/content/pricing.
Wikispaces does not support real-time collaborative editing. When multiple users try to edit the same page simultaneously, the page will be overwritten to the latest version.
Website I Blog I Timeline I Presentation I Animated Video I Video I Screencast I Interactive Poster I Comic Strip