Online Publishing Tools

One of the most challenging facets of being a teacher that uses technology to teach, is the ability to find cheap instructional tools from a variety of sources. As we all know software can be expensive, especially if you have a variety of projects and grade levels to teach. The other concern is the learning curve that accompanies the software. Is it going to be too hard for the students to learn and how long will it take them to learn the new software?

One of the areas that is the cause for a concern on these two levels, is in the area of Web site creation. With programs like Adobe Dreamweaver and Microsoft Frontpage, The software can be quite an expense to fit on your school's budget. Not only do you have to worry about the cost, but what about the amount of time it will take to learn these very sophisticated software packages?

Fortunately, the Internet has several options for handling this problem by way of online publishing tools. These tools are free and exist on the Internet. After a very brief sign up process, you can put together a web page and have it already posted to the Internet without any technical experience whatsoever. Below is a list of some of the online publishing sites that you or any of your students can go to, sign up and begin publishing web pages directly to the Internet.

• pbWiki - This online publishing tool has turned out to be the world's largest provider of educational and business wikis, serving millions of users a month. It is 100% free and very easy for students to learn. Click on the link below to see the video.
• pbWiki Video
• Wikispaces - This is another online Wikis that has been designed for teachers and students alike. This method of online publishing has been designed to make the entire process very easy to learn and implement
• Blogger - Blogs are a very easy way to publish slick, nice looking web documents. Blogs are a little different than Wikis, because they act almost like a diary that posts in reverse chronological order. In other words, the first post or insert you make will be listed last and the last post you make will be listed first. Blogger is the easiest of the blogs to get involved with on the Internet and you can easily post articles, pictures, audio files and even video files onto the Internet very quickly with out any prior education of how they work.
• Keep Toolkit - Here is a set of Web based tools that allows teachers and students to create portfolio - like presentation on the Internet. With the Keep Toolkit you can: * Share ideas for peer review *Prompt analysis from peers and teachers by using templates * Organize teaching materials.