Three Ways to Create Simple Portfolio Websites

We're nearing the point in the school year that many of us start to think about activities for students to do to summarize their highlights of the school year. One way to do that is to create simple portfolio websites. These are sites that have just one page that features only the best work that students are proud to share. 

In this short video I demonstrate how to use three different platforms to create simple portfolio websites. In the video you'll see me use Carrd.co, Adobe Creative Cloud Express, and Canva to create simple websites. 

Applications for Education

Some examples of the things you might have students include in a simple portfolio website are pictures (either of their work or as examples of their work), videos they've made in your class, slide presentations, and documents they've written. 

How to Create a Webpage in Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark has received a lot of attention in the last year for the great video creation tool that it contains. But it also contains an excellent tool for creating simple webpages. Within Adobe Spark you can create webpages that contain images, text, and videos. Those pages can then be published as stand-alone sites or they can be embedded into a blog post as I have done below.

Watch the following short video to learn how to create a webpage in Adobe Spark.

How to Create Webpages In Canva

Canva is known for its great graphic design tools. You've always been able to download your Canva graphics and upload them to your website. A few months ago Canva introduced the option to publish your graphics as webpages and or embed them into existing webpages. As I wrote earlier this week, using the publishing option in Canva is a great way to create simple storytelling websites. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to create and publish a simple webpage through Canva.

Life With Dogs by richardbyrne

Canva Adds New Awesome New Features!

Last week I shared a video tutorial about how to create greeting cards with Canva's excellent templates and design tools. That's an example of just one of the many things that students can design in Canva. This week Canva released more design and publishing features.

Canva now offers dynamic chart editing. In other words you can pick a template that includes a chart and edit any of the content displayed in that chart.

All Canva designs can now be embedded into blog posts and websites. This removes the need for you to download your design then upload it to your blog or website. If you make a change to your design after you embed it, the updated design will automatically be displayed in your blog post. And speaking of design updates, you can now invite others to collaborate with you on your designs.

Finally, and perhaps most exciting, Canva designs can now be published as webpages. To do this just click the share button on your design and select the option to publish as a webpage. This option could be great for folks who want to create webpages to serve as flyers for school events.

Otter & Sqworl - Two Helpful Tools for Teachers

Scurry Labs is a small company that develops helpful web applications for teachers. Two their best products for teachers are called Otter and Sqworl.

Otter is a service that makes it easy to create simple webpages on which you can distribute information and collect assignments from students. Otter provides four widgets that you can add to your page. Those widgets are announcements, calendar events, hosted documents, and homework uploads. The widgets appear in that order on your page. Hosted documents can be uploaded from your computer or imported from Google Drive, Box, and Dropbox. Students can upload their assignment submissions through your Otter page.

Sqworl is a free bookmarking tool for teachers and students. Bookmarks created with Sqworl save a screen capture of each page you bookmark. To help you organize your bookmarks, you can create multiple groups of bookmarks in your Sqworl account. Should you choose to share your bookmarks you can share one or all of your bookmarks groups via the unique URLs that Sqworl assigns to each group. You can add bookmarks to your Sqworl account by manually inputting web addresses or by using a browser bookmarklet. The visual aspect of Sqworl provides a helpful reminder of why a site was bookmarked and what that site is about.

Try Strikingly to Create Beautiful Webpages

Striking.ly is a service that can be used to create one page websites to show off your best digital work or to advertise an event. Striking.ly provides a variety of templates for digital portfolios and digital flyers. Each template can be customized by hovering your mouse on any element of the template and selecting the edit button. Free Striking.ly pages are assigned Striking.ly subdomains. Premium accounts can have custom domains.

Applications for Education
Creating a Striking.ly page could be a good way for students to showcase examples of their best images and videos. Students can also use Striking.ly pages to feature examples of their best writings.

5 Ways for Students to Showcase Their Best Work

As the end of the school year approaches you may be looking for a good way for students to organize and share examples of their best work of the school year. If your students have blogs or wikis that they have maintained all year then all they need to do is move their best examples to the front page. But if that is not the case for your students then take a look at these five services your students can use to organize and showcase examples of their best work.

Page O Rama is a free service for quickly creating stand alone webpages. Creating a webpage with Page O Rama is very simple. Just visit the Page O Rama homepage, select a web address, title your page, and start typing. Page O Rama offers a good selection of text editing tools including page breaks. If you want to, you can add images to your Page O Rama pages too. If you think your page is something that you're going to want to edit and update occasionally, you can enter your email address to create an administrative log-in.

Dropr is a free service for creating portfolios of your images, videos, and audio files. Within your Dropr account you can have multiple portfolio pages. If you wanted to have a page for images that you took in the fall and a page for images that you took in the spring, you can do that in Dropr. To create a Dropr portfolio start by signing up with a social media profile or with your email address. Then start your first project by uploading a cover image. Once you have started a project you can drag and drop media from your desktop to the Dropr website. Each project can include text in addition to the media that you upload to it. Each of your projects will have a different URL. You can work on your projects in private until you are ready to share them with the world. Your Dropr projects can be embedded into a blog as a slideshow.

Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to showcase an example or two of your best work. On Populr you can quickly create a stylish webpage with pictures, text, and document uploads. Populr offers a selection of templates that you can modify or you can build your page from scratch. All of the editing (aside from typing text) is done through a drag and drop interface.

About.me is a good tool for students to use to create a digital resume to share as part of a college admissions application or an internship application. About.me makes it easy to quickly create a one page site highlighting your strengths, things you've published online, and your preferred contact information. About.me offers support for embedding YouTube, Vimeo, and SoudCloud files into your page. This is a great option for students who are hoping to find employment or internships in the media production field. Students can prominently feature their best videos and or podcasts on their About.me pages.

Tackk is a free service that was featured last week on Free Technology for Teachers. By using Tackk you can create a page to announce an important event, to advertise an event, or to show off your best digital works. To create a Tackk page you do not need to register for an account, but unregistered Tackk pages expire after seven days. If you register for the service your Tackk pages stay up indefinitely. I registered for the service before creating my first Tackk page. Creating my Tackk was a simple matter of uploading an image then adding text in the customizable fields above and below my image. Tackk pages can accommodate videos, audio files, and maps, but I did not include those items in my first Tackk page.

5 Tools for Quickly Building Simple Announcement Pages

School websites and classroom blogs are excellent tools for distributing information to parents and students. But sometimes you might want to make your announcements stand-out from the rest of the cyber noise that parents and students experience on a daily basis. Or perhaps you want your students to create their own webpages to showcase their best work or to announce an upcoming school event. In those cases, you might take a look at a tool to build a stand-alone webpage dedicated to one specific event or announcement. Here are five tools for doing just that.

Striking.ly is a service that can be used to create one page websites to show off your best digital work or to advertise an event. Striking.ly provides a variety of templates for digital portfolios and digital flyers. Each template can be customized by hovering your mouse on any element of the template and selecting the edit button. Free Striking.ly pages are assigned Striking.ly subdomains. Premium accounts can have custom domains.

Page O Rama is a free service for quickly creating stand alone webpages. Creating a webpage with Page O Rama is very simple. Just visit the Page O Rama homepage, select a web address, title your page, and start typing. Page O Rama offers a good selection of text editing tools including page breaks. If you want to, you can add images to your Page O Rama pages too. If you think your page is something that you're going to want to edit and update occasionally, you can enter your email address to create an administrative log-in.

Pagefin is a free service for creating simple webpages without the need to register for an account. To create a webpage with Pagefin just click "create and share," enter the captcha code, and start designing your webpage. Pagefin does not offer any fancy template to widgets to add to your pages, just a blank slate to design on. You can add text boxes, images, and videos to your webpages. When you're happy with your page click on the share button to have a URL generated for your page. The share button will also provide you with an editing link (don't share that one).

Smore is a service for quickly creating great-looking webpages. Smore markets itself as a service for creating online flyers, but it's a little bit more than that. To me "flyer" implies that you're creating a single-use PDF and posting it online. Smore's flyers are dynamic and changeable, they're not single-use PDFs. Your Smore flyers can include many types of media including videos. Deleting or adding elements to your Smore flyer is as simple as dragging and dropping them on or off your page.

Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to advertise events and promotions. On Populr you can quickly create a stylish webpage with pictures, text, and document uploads. Populr offers a selection of templates that you can modify or you can build your page from scratch. All of the editing (aside from typing text) is done through a drag and drop interface.

Populr - A Nice Tool for Building Simple Webpages

Populr is a service for creating simple webpages to advertise events and promotions. The service reminds me a bit of the popular Smore platform. On Populr you can quickly create a stylish webpage with pictures, text, and document uploads. Populr offers a selection of templates that you can modify or you can build your page from scratch. All of the editing (aside from typing text) is done through a drag and drop interface. See how it works in the video below.


Applications for Education
Populr, like other services that are similar to it, could be a good tool for creating promotions for school dances, club activities, or to advertise good news from your classroom.

Populr offers a variety of pricing plans. The free plan should be more than adequate for most school settings.

Tackk - Create Simple Webpages for Assignments and Announcements

Tackk is a free service that you can use to quickly create simple webpages. Using Tackk you can create a page to announce an important event, to advertise an event, or to show off your best digital works. I initially tried the service last year. Recently, the Tackk team sent me a message about the various ways that teachers and students are using their service. That email got me to look at the service again.

To create a Tackk page you do not need to register for an account, but unregistered Tackk pages expire after seven days. If you register for the service your Tackk pages stay up indefinitely. I registered for the service before creating my first Tackk page. Creating my Tackk was a simple matter of uploading an image then adding text in the customizable fields above and below my image. Tackk pages can accommodate videos, audio files, and maps, but I did not include those items in my first Tackk page.

Applications for Education
Tackk has a gallery of examples of the ways that teachers and students have been using Tackk for the last year. One of the ways that Tackk is being used by teachers is to distribute and collect assignments. You can learn how to do that here.

Tackk could be a good tool for students to use to quickly create a page to show off some of their digital photography, video creation projects, or audio files. Student groups looking to create a landing page for a fundraising event may want to give Tackk a try too.

Tackk - Quickly Create Simple Webpages

Tackk is a free service that you can use to quickly create simple webpages. Using Tackk you can create a page to announce an important event, to advertise an event, or to show off your best digital works.

To create a Tackk page you do not need to register for an account, but unregistered Tackk pages expire after seven days. If you register for the service your Tackk pages stay up indefinitely. I registered for the service before creating my first Tackk page. Creating my Tackk was a simple matter of uploading an image then adding text in the customizable fields above and below my image. Tackk pages can accommodate videos, audio files,  and maps, but I did not include those items in my first Tackk page.

Applications for Education
Tackk could be a good tool for students to use to quickly create a page to show off some of their digital photography, video creation projects, or audio files. Student groups looking to create a landing page for a fundraising event may want to give Tackk a try too.

H/T to David Kapuler.

Scroll Kit - Build a Website from Scratch Without Coding

There a lot of free services that allow you to build webpages without coding (find 11 of them here), but those services limit your creativity by requiring you to use one of their predefined templates or themes. Scroll Kit gives you a completely blank canvas to build on.

When you sign into Scroll Kit for the first time you will see a brief tutorial on how to use the service. As you work through the tutorial, you can delete parts of the tutorial until you have a blank canvas. On your blank canvas you can draw, add text boxes, add images, add videos, and insert app scripts. You can build multiple layers into your Scroll Kit site. When you're ready to publish your pages you can publish on a Scroll Kit subdomain for free or redirect to a domain that you own.

Applications for Education
A word of warning before you use the site, currently one of Scroll Kit's sample pages contains a word that is definitely not appropriate for school. I sent them an email and suggested a change, we'll see what happens. If they take my advice Scroll Kit could be a good tool for students to use to quickly begin experimenting with elements of design.


Big update! Scroll Kit took my advice and changed the sample page that had the bad language on it. I love it when new companies are responsive to teachers. Scroll Kit is definitely a good tool that students can use to quickly experiment with elements of web design. The blank canvas gives students the freedom to make their pages as beautiful or as ugly they like.


Update again: Thanks to Mark's comment below I learned that Scroll Kit only changed one of the sample pages not all of them. Sorry :(

Create Webpages in Minutes With Pagefin

Pagefin is a free service for creating simple webpages without the need to register for an account. To create a webpage with Pagefin just click "create and share," enter the captcha code, and start designing your webpage. Pagefin does not offer any fancy template to widgets to add to your pages, just a blank slate to design on. You can add text boxes, images, and videos to your webpages. When you're happy with your page click on the share button to have a URL generated for your page. The share button will also provide you with an editing link (don't share that one).

Applications for Education
Pagefin could be a good tool for students to use to create and share a page of their best writings, video productions, or favorite images. Pagefin's blank slate approach allows you to add as many text boxes, images, and video elements as you like. Looking at it from that perspective, Pagefin could be a good platform to have students use to create online collages of media arranged around a research topic.

Click here for 11 more ways to create websites and simple webpages.

The New Hive - Build Media Collages

On Sunday afternoon Scott McLeod sent a Tweet my way to tell me to check out The New Hive. And as I have tremendous respect for Scott's work and opinions, I knew that I had to give The New Hive a good look.

The New Hive is a new service that allows you to create online collages of your favorite media and text. It's a bit like Glogster without templates and bubbly artwork predefined for you and it's free unlike Glogster which used to be free. The New Hive provides a blank canvas that you can design with images, videos, audio files, and text. You can quickly re-size and re-position the elements on your pages by draggin and dropping them. The pages that you create on The New Hive can be made public or private.



The New Hive is still in an invite-only beta phase so you will have to request an invitation to try it out. While you are waiting for your invitation, check out the gallery of public The New Hive creations including this one of Dr. Seuss and this one about MCA (I included that one just for the folks of my generation who enjoyed the Beastie Boys).

Applications for Education
I was disappointed to see Glogster slowly eliminate their free offerings, but I understand that they have to make money too. The New Hive could be a good alternative to Glogster for teachers who cannot purchase Glogster licenses. I also like that The New Hive has a little cleaner interface  for users to work on.