Weebly

This afternoon I led a session on Weebly. This one actually took quite some time because of setting up the account, and then, playing around with all of the features. I planned on giving a lot of time so that teachers could actually get their websites up. The session lasted an hour and a half even with just five teachers! I am actually thankful that there were not more teachers there because they all had so many different questions and I was busy jumping from person to person to help them with their unique questions.

The overall presentation of information went well, and I felt like it was smooth. This time, I offered an incentive to come...a wireless Mac mouse. I thought in offering that, that I would get more participants, but I did find out that many teachers in the science department are already using Weebly as a class website. Others are also committed to the end of the quarter grading/report cards or are busy coaching the end of the fall sports season.

We talked about how Weebly can be a teacher website, a teacher/student presentational tool, and a way to organize information for taking students to the computer lab. The teachers that came today were mainly looking for the class website aspect of this site, but everyone was surprised how easy it was.

Tomorrow, we have a professional day without students, so I offered to provide follow-up if anyone needs help. Most of the attendees said that they were going to go home to play with their new sites some more, and would come with questions/problems tomorrow. We'll see if anyone takes me up on the offer. Everyone was so thankful and seemed really excited. I have been excited seeing others this way about technology, especially since people are not this way with ASPEN.

The one discouraging thing about today was the Internet access. Our building is supposed to have wireless everywhere, but the wireless access in my room was SO slow during the session. People were enthused by the drag and drop nature of Weebly, but the drop portion was taking forever to load. I may hold the next session in the media center if it continues.

Next Monday, I will lead the final session on ASPEN with my department. This one should be an easy one, but I am certain that there will still be numerous questions!!! Here's to almost finishing my internship!