Add Interactivity to Your Website Interactivity can be a compelling and innovative way to engage your students and create experiences that cannot be replicated in other media. Weebly provides multiple functions for you to achieve the interactivity, such as survey, forum, poll, social icons, feed reader, and blog. You will learn how to use those functions in this tutorial. You are required to add a blog to your course site and encouraged to use other interactive function. You can use survey function to create quizzes, worksheets, and surveys for your class. 1. Blog It is convenient to create a blog page in Weebly. As Picture 1.1 shows, you can select PAGES in the control panel and it will navigate you to the next screen to add the blog. Picture 1.1 Click PAGES in Control Panel Click the Add Page + button in the upper-left corner and choose Blog Page from the dropdown menu. Then specify the blog name and layout on the right side of the screen. Choose save and edit to get started with your blog. Picture 1.2 Add a Blog Page Then you will see the next screen as Picture 1.3 and you can edit the blog now.
Picture 1.3 Blog Screen You can create a new post after clicking New Post button. It is simple to edit the content for the post because you can also directly drag elements and drop here. On the right side of the screen in Picture 1.4, you can decide whether to share on Facebook and Twitter for promotion. It is highly recommended to set the comments Open so that your students can comment on your post. After completing editing the new post, you can create tags and category it. Additionally, you can also generate a secret link to share with your friends. At last, you can choose to save the post, save as a draft, and also cancel post. Since you won t have a lot blog post for this class, I suggest that you remove Categories and Change Archive to Blogroll. You will add your peers blog URL in this section. Type your peer s name, highlight the name, click Link icon, and copy/paste his/her blog URL in the URL box. Make sure to check the box before Open in a New Window.
Picture 1.3: Create a New Post Picture 1.4: Manage Comments Picture 1.4 demonstrates how to manage comments from your readers. Once readers comment on your blog, you can view all of them after clicking Comments button. Choose one comment and you can decide whether to approve, delete, or spam it based on your preference. If you want the comment to show below your post, choose Approve.
Picture 1.5: Change Blog Settings Blog Settings enables you to change the overall setting of the blog. You can choose the default setting for comment and it is suggested to be Open. You can also adjust some other basic settings such as posts per page, notification email address, safety issues, and date/time. Please check the Picture 1.5 for a better idea. On the right side of Picture 1.2, you can change the settings for author description, archives, categories, and RSS Feed, similar to common online blog. Now you can get started to create your own blog! Remember to publish all the pages! 2. Discussion Board Discussion board is a common tool that is widely used through online courses. Weebly can also enable discussion board by embedding Forums from the category of More options, which rightly locates in the lower right corner of the left sidebar. You can directly drag the element to the page and begin to edit it.
Picture 2.1 Forums Click Start a Topic to create your new discussions. Simply type the title and content in right text boxes. You can also embed an image, a link, a quote, or HTML codes in the content area. There are two categories for discussions, news and off-topic. You can category the new discussion in terms of contents by yourself. After the content is done for editing, you can change the settings of this new topic. Subscribe will notify you of new comments and replies through emails. Sticky is set for important announcement. If selected, the announcement will show at the top of the forum. If Closed is selected, it means the topic stop receiving comments and replies. You can change those settings anytime if needed. 3. Poll Weebly allows you to create a poll and view results at Polldaddy.com. You can find Poll in the category of More options and directly drag it to the page. Move the cursor to the new poll and the editing box will emerge. You can change the alignment of the poll. Also, if you click on Edit Poll, you can even further edit in the Polldaddy.com.
Picture 3.1 Edit the Poll Picture 3.2 Create a New Poll on Polldaddy.com
Picture 3.3 Edit the New Poll Edit Poll will directly navigate you to Polldaddy.com. Be sure to register for Pollydaddy.com so that you can view the result. Click Settings and complete the registration (Picture 3.2). Picture 3.2 highlighted the button you can click to create a new poll, and then Picture 3.3 will be on the screen. You can edit poll questions and answers with instructions on Picture 3.3. In addition, the right side of the picture is the place that you can change settings of the poll. If there are other good answers, you can select Allow Other Answer. If the right answer is not restricted to one, you can select Multiple Choice. If you select Randomize Answers, the order of answers will be randomized for students to view. If Block Repeat Voters is selected, it means students can only vote once in total. Share this link means the poll will be public. For the poll results, there are three options, including Show Results, percentage, and Hide Results. You can decide how to show the result in terms of your needs. The language is pre-assumed as Default Language. After all the settings are done, remember to save the poll. Then it comes to the second step, poll design. You can choose whether the poll will use PollDaddy style. Furthermore, you can select the design and size of the poll (as Picture 3.4). After you make a decision, you can save the design and then confirm the poll will be added to the page (clicking Add to page on Picture 3.5).
Picture 3.4 Poll Design Picture 3.5 Add the Poll to Page
4. Survey (test/quiz maker) Survey is a common method of assessment in online courses. Weebly provides easy access to survey through drag-and-drop function. Survey function is versatile in Weebly because it can generate survey, tests/auizzes, dropbox for assignments, and etc. Survey element are located in the category of More options. After you drag Survey to the page, you can see the following screen. Picture 4.1 Survey You may find the content and organization of left sidebar have changed. More elements emerge in Form Fields and include short text box, large text box, options buttons, and etc. You can drag them to the page and then revise to ensure they can fit the survey. Before editing, you can select the item and then the editing window will pop out. Then you can edit the item in terms of your needs. You can view the results in View Entries and also in your registered email address. Then I will mainly introduce how to use survey to create assignment dropbox. It is quite easy on Weebly because you only need drag Text and File Upload to the page. The Picture 4.2 shows all the elements you need for an assignment dropbox. Then what you need do is to paste
the title and description of the assignment to the text frame (Picture 4.3). An assignment dropbox is completed but you need realize that File Upload needs a pro account requires you to pay. Picture 4.2 Assignment Picture 4.3 Assignment Dropbox Sample
5. Social Icons Social media can bring in interactivity for the course. To embed social network service in the course, you can simply drag social icon to the page. Click on the elements and the editing window will pop out. Choose Add/Edit Icons and type/paste the link you want to navigate to in the right box. If you want to insert more SNS accounts, click Add more at the bottom for continued editing (as Picture 5.1 shows). Picture 5.1 Social Icons 6. Feed Reader You may consider subscribe to some website or news portal on your course website. So a feed reader can meet the needs. You can complete the subscription in one minute with great functions of Weebly. You can find Feed Readers in the category of More options. Drag Feed Readers to the page and click on the reader. Then the editing window pops out and what you need do is to provide the URL that you want to subscribe in the text box. Besides, you can also adjust the settings of width & height, position, spacing, and other advanced settings, such as number of items and text length using the editing window (Picture 6.1).
Picture 6.1 Feed Reader