Weebly (Technology Journal Entry)

http://www.weebly.com/weebly/main.php


This week I decided to kill two homework birds with one adventure-taking a look at Weebly.  Above is the link for my professional portfolio that is only in the initial stages of completion-i.e., I had no idea what I was doing and just played around!

I chose this tool because I had no idea what Weebly was and thought I would check it out.  Honestly, I liked the name-it sounds cute.

I liked the following about this tool:  the tutorial options is awesome-it is helpful to get started, it is relatively user friendly (see my dislikes), and it has a lot of design options.  I used their free stock pictures to play around with my heading graphics and they are decent.  I will probably upload some better pictures as I realize this is a professional portfolio-although the Mr. Potato Head does make me smile.

I did not like the lack of direction once you get past the initial "home" page.  I had no idea how to create the tabs on my site for my project-i.e. I didn't get how someone would click to get to my resume or professional philosophy.  I did play around and figured it out, and maybe I am missing additional tutorials, but it was a bit confusing to get started.  I currently also cannot figure out how to change the text font-I realize it isn't a big deal, but as I have shared before-this makes a difference to me!  If people are going to be looking at this, I want it to look really good.

I could not figure out how to change the text font and will return to explore this as well as adding additional graphics to the page.  I have some images from Pinterest that I would prefer to use so I will take the time to figure that out.  I did enjoy the ease of getting started-again I do think that Weebly is user friendly overall.  I did appreciate the initial tutorial but again wonder if I am missing additional tutorials that would enable me to personalize the site a bit deeper.  I will also be exploring that as well.

I would totally use this with students/parents/administrators to communicate the goings on of my library!!  I would request that this site was provided on my school's homepage for easy access and would update it weekly with pictures, book reviews (from myself as well as guest bloggers-students, teachers, administrators), special events, and maybe even spotlight certain genres.  There are so many things that I could do to inform the school culture of the exciting happenings in the library-this is an easy and free way to publicize the fantastic things that are happening.  I would even post how the space is being used-in my case posting pictures of ISU students who are using the space to work on research projects with students, pictures of chess club practice-anything that gives the library excellent press.

I really like Weebly and will definitely be using it to create my Professional Portfolio project.