Chromebooks for graphic Design part 2 - web design with weebly.com

Of the multitude of free Web design sites "out there" (as one of my colleagues refers to cyberspace), I chose to use Weebly for a few reasons. The fact that I can design a Website with Weebly on a Chromebook is actually quite irrelevant, because I could do that with any number of other browser-based applications. I can also, of course, use Weebly on a PC or Mac. But why do I use Weebly, and why is it suited for Chromebooks?

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photo credit: vernieman via photopin cc

1. I am a teacher.
2. Weebly has a free EDU package.
3. My school uses Google Apps for Education (GAFE).
4. GAFE has a Weebly App for the Google Chrome browser.
5. My class has Chromebooks.
6. The students sign in to Weebly through our GAFE account.
7. Weebly EDU allows me to create a class.
8. The class keeps my students' work private if I so choose.
9. I can monitor the progress of my students because they are not logging in with individual accounts.
10. Weebly is easy to use, yet offers some super Web design features.

The free education plan (education.weebly.com) limits student Web sites to five pages, but I can live with that. Teacher sites have no limit on the number of pages in a site, and they can create up to 10 separate sites. Students are allowed two Web sites. Also with the free EDU plan, teachers can add any number of classes, but are allowed only 40 total student accounts. For teachers with more than 40 students, additional accounts can be purchased, or earned by recruiting other teachers to sign up for Weebly Education.  The teacher has total control of the student accounts including setting up the user name and password.

The Weebly Pro plan is incredibly inexpensive. For $39.95 per year, you get
(for the teacher and students):

1. 10 sites per account
2. Unlimited pages per student website
3. 250 MB file uploads
4. Audio player
5. Video player
6. Embedded documents
   

(for only the teacher):

1. Password-protect individual pages
   
2. Premium Support
   
3. Remove or Customize Weebly footer
   

And I am guessing your biggest question is this: If you are a GAFE school, why aren't you using Google Sites for Web design? First of all, the Google Sites learning curve is (arguably) a good deal longer than Weebly's. I also don't have the teacher management controls in Google Sites. And, I'm sorry, but most Google Sites I've seen are just plain ugly. I hearken back to the days of Microsoft FrontPage templates - UGH!

As I promised in Part 1 of this series, I'd like to give a shout out to some additional Web sites and Chrome extensions:

1. Clippingmagic.com - remove image backgrounds easily to create a "cut-out" .png image with a transparent background! These are great when you want to put an image on a colored or pattern background without having the hideous white box (or any other background) around it.
2. Awesome Screenshot and Techsmith Snagit extensions for Chrome - both allow you to capture a still shot of your screen (or a portion of it) and then annotate it with shapes, arrows, text, etc.  The image can then be saved and placed on a Web page or in a document.