Horton Hears a Tweet (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE.edu

Horton Hears a Tweet (EDUCAUSE Quarterly) | EDUCAUSE.edu

Using Flickr for Media-Rich Classes (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu

Using Flickr for Media-Rich Classes (EDUCAUSE Review) | EDUCAUSE.edu

Web Design Part 2 - Wix

Wix Review

The third web building and hosting service I tried out was Wix.  I had never heard of Wix before and my Klingon speaking web geek had not either, responding  "nuq ghaH Wix!? " or in english "what's a Wix?".

Well Wix is a nifty little web design tool that uses an HTML5 authoring tool, that features  drag-n-drop editing,  which results in a very user friendly interface.  There are lots of cool categorized themes that you can use as a template and then customize them most any way you want to fit your personal needs.  Wix also works very well on mobile devices, my site looked sharp on iOS as well as Android (the Google site, not so much).

I had one issue tech issue while building my site, one of the navigation buttons would not work when I took the site live.  I tried to figure this out, but the solution eluded me.  I decided to venture over to the support side of Wix, posed my question and waited.  I posted my question at 5:30pm MST and received a response at 8:38 the next morning.  Not only did I get my issue completely explained but the problem was also fixed for me!  To put this into perspective,  I had contacted Google about an issue with embedding a Google doc...and I am still waiting four days later.

I also thought that it was interesting how easily Blogger interfaced with Wix, it looks very nice and was super simple to configure.  The Google Sites version looks tacky and is more of a pain to set up.  Which is very odd since Blogger is now a Goggle product, you would think they would have a nice interface.  Take a look for yourself:  my Google Sites and Wix blog pages.


Wix is not a web builder panacea, there are some things that are not all that great.  Many great features are reserved for premium members.  The big thing I love about Google Sites is how easy it is to use your own domain, not so with Wix where you have to be a premium subscriber.  I also struggled with incorporating RSS feeds, and need to spend a bit more time working with them.

Wix:

Pros:

• The drag-n-drop user interface is awesome
• Highly customizable 
• Very logical and easy to use interface
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but only for premium

Cons:

• Very proprietary 
• Domain transfer only with premium
• Can get expensive
• No RSS feeds?

Bottom line:  After using all three (Google Sites, WP and Wix) I have learned to like Wix the most and may be looking at upgrading the site to premium.

Web design made easy...or is it?

Website Publishing Madness

There are so many sites in cyber-world to help you create and maintain your own website, Google sites, Wordpress, Wix, and SquareSpace just to name a few.  Being that I wanted to create my own website to host an online portfolio I wadded into this abyss.  First, I should tell you that I have zero experience with web design and HTML, Java and CSS...nor do I speak speak Klingon, so I figured I had my work cut out for me.  I thought I would share with you some of the little things that I have learned from playing around with these various web building and hosting services.  I will spare you all from a tedious play-by-play and instead provide a very broad overview.  What I will tell you is that all of these services (Google Sites, WordPress, Wix and SquareSpace all do certain things very well, and if I had a magic wand I would take the integration of Google Sites, and combine it with Wix's cool design and ease of use, and throw in the utility of WordPress.  But wait, who am I kidding?  This is the last thing I would do if I had a magic wand!  I mean who even needs the internet on a tropical paradise with every need being attended to? Oops, there I go again getting off track, back to the issue at hand.

I did not want to spend a lot of money (I mean who does?) so I started with Google Sites, which came recommended by several friends who had already began the web building adventure.  Now these friends are great, very knowledgeable but afterwords I learned that NONE of them use Google Sites, they are all Dreamweaver snobs who meant well, but I digress.  I started with Google sites and found it to be fairly straight forward and very easy to use.  I had a decent site up and running fairly quickly, and if I wanted a basic site, with few bells and whistles I would have been content.  I soon learned that Google Sites is fairly limited as far as really customizing your site.  You are stuck with basic themes and global settings that cannot be changed from page to page.  I also did not like the options for inserting a photo gallery, you are pretty much limited to using the Google Gadgets, that in turn use Picasa.  I was not a big fan of dropping a Picasa slide show as my gallery.

Google Sites:

Pros:

• Easy to use, fast to set up
• Bang for your buck, you get a lot of functionality for zero cost!
• Integrates nicely with other Google products
• Has a large following and easy to find support
• Easy to incorporate you own domain name

Cons:

• Limited in design customizations
• Limited to rely on open source Google Gadgets
• Difficult to incorporate photo galleries (at least the way I wanted them)
• I could not get it to work well on multiple browsers- it was very browser dependent look liked crap on a mobile device.

Bottom line:  Great for the beginner!  The place to start and get comfortable with web design, though you may find it is limiting after you get some skills.

Off to WordPress to see what was available there.  I did not care for the Blog orientation of WordPress, again I felt limited in the design and found that all the cool designs were "premium" and I was not all that excited about paying for them.  I should qualify my rant by stating that I abandoned using WP after about three days, a few hours a day messing around with it.  There is a lot of stuff out there for WP, and there is a huge community, this was both good and bad...how could this be bad you wonder?  Well I found that having so much out there can be a bit overwhelming.

WordPress:

Pros:

• A tried and true product, with lots of support and functionality
• A great platform for blogging
• Hundreds, probably even thousands, of themes to choose from
• Very easily updated and maintained (really good app for that!)
• Easy to incorporate your own domain

Cons:

• Much more time intensive than Google Sites or Wix
• Many of the great themes were "premium" ones that you had to pay for.
• Appeared to be many hidden costs, if you are not careful you can get nickel and dime'd to death.
• Can be overwhelming, especially if you do not have a strong base in HTML
• Was not crazy about the dedication to the blog layout.

Bottom line:  If you have time and or knowledge a great product!  You just have to be a bit more into it to get the most out of WP.

Look for my next post to hear (do you really hear?  I guess you read) what I have to say about Wix!

have a good one!

First post!!

Hello everyone!  Today I am introducing my new blog, a place for me to share miscellanous thoughts and ramblings about areas that interest me.  Here you will find topics such as eLearning and Instructional design (great for the educators out there), all things web and tech related, my criminal justice corner as well as some reviews thrown in on new things I am using or have watched or seen (that way I can have some fun, throwing in movies, music and other good stuff).  I hope you will find my blog helpful, entertaining and maybe even educational.

Todays blog is a quick mention of some great free audio programs that you can use for eLearning, creating web based presentations for use in the classroom or online.  All of these are free (with the exception of Microsoft's Soundsmith-although this is free to educators).

Audacity   An audio editor that is free and easy to use. 

                            (a tutorial-courtesy of articulatebrian    http://screenr.com/5OH

Levelator  A tool to make your audio narration better.  It's an easy way to edit and adjust your audio for presentations.  Here is a quick tutorial

If you want to add something other than just the sound of your voice then Creative Commons Audio is a good resource for music and sound effects. Here are some sites that offer sound effects and free music.

               CCMixter

               The Freesound Project

              OpSound

              Free Music Archive

             Jamendo

                           

               
For those who are a bit more creative and, unlike myself, have some talent there are tools to make your own music:

Microsoft’s Songsmith- a $30.00 program is free to educators http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/songsmith/news.html

Of course you can also make your own music with Musicshake http://eng.musicshake.com/ or even Garage Band from Apple.

(source The Rapid eLearning Blog  http://www.articulate.com/rapid-elearning/)