Weebly

Libby Hilsendager

Introduction
Weebly is a website which helps people create websites, blogs, learning aids, and more-- for everything from businesses to non-profit organizations to student e-portfolios! It was founded in 2006 in San Francisco as a website development company; by 2007, they were named one of //TIME//'s 50 Best Websites of 2007. Creators of Weebly websites use a simple "drag and drop" technique, so even non-tech savvy people can create the coolest and most professional websites!

Benefits

 * Change of taste in the style of your design? That's OK! If you choose a new design, the full site will adapt to the new design.
 * Your website lives in two data center locations across the United States to provide superior uptime, response time, and reliability compared to most any other hosting.
 * The basic platform is ** FREE **, although there is the option to upgrade to higher levels for a nominal fee.
 * It's easy to use and if you have problems, there are video tutorials to search through or an e-mail address to contact with service responding as fast as a couple of hours!
 * It's a multitasking website: it can be used as an e-portfolio website, a blog or just a place for students to record reflections!
 * There is no forced advertising! Some other sites use pop-ups or banner advertisements as part of your "free" service and domain name. Not Weebly!
 * There is automatic adjusting for mobile devices...the creator doesn't have to do anything.
 * It's password protected: you make each page as public or private as you would like. If you have reflections you don't want the public viewing, you can protect them!

Challenges

 * Weebly is not set up to handle complex e-commerce tasks, but since we're really only focusing on this website with respect to a reflection tool, that's hardly a "weakness"!
 * Some people feel they have a limited number of professionally designed templates (Purewal, 2011).
 * No 800 phone number to contact anyone directly...you are at the mercy of e-mail ([])
 * No feature to support multilingual languages. Support is only offered in English ([])
 * Individual files cannot exceed 5MB, but overall, there is no space limit on the site ([])

Learning examples of authentic application

 * Students can utilize this site to keep track of reflections for a course.
 * Students can utilize this site to reflect on service or group projects.
 * Students can utilize this site to reflect on areas of strengths and weaknesses in their clinical training.

Examples of learning objectives
**Objective A:** At the completion of the course, the student will be able demonstrate knowledge of the Weebly site by posting weekly reflections on their personal Weebly website by the deadline for each week (Sunday at midnight).

**Objective B:** At the end of each semester, the student will utilize Weebly to write a personal reflection on their insights gained and issues that were confusing during their clinical internship. The reflection will be 3-4 paragraphs in length.

This video demonstrates the ease of using Weebly:
media type="youtube" key="Z6iqVxaALas" height="315" width="420"

References Utilized
Brandl, R. (2012, May 13). Weebly review: We test "free & easy" Weebly. Retrieved from: [] First Class Web Hosting. (2010, October 14). Weebly featured review. Retrieved from: [] Purewal, S. (2011). Build a Small-Business Website. //PC World//, //29//(10), 33. Website-Builder-Review.info. (2012, June 15). Weebly review. Retrieved from: [] (2011, April 24). Retrieved from: [|http://www.weebly.com]