Three Ways to Create Simple, Focused Websites

ByRichard Byrne

I often get asked for recommendations for simple website builders that teachers and students can use to create small websites. The purpose isn’t to share everything they’ve done and have you grade it. Tools like Seesaw and Spaces are good for that. The purpose of these kinds of sites is to share photography, their resumes, videos they’ve made, or awards and references they’ve received.

Google Sites is fine for making simple sites, but the aesthetics still have a long way to go. Services like WordPress and Weebly are great, but have way more menus and options than what’s needed for a quick and simple site. Fortunately, there are some good tools students can use to quickly create simple, good-looking websites to showcase their work and share a bit about themselves. Here are three that are worth trying.

Carrd.co

Carrd.co is a new easy-to-use tool to quickly create good-looking, simple websites. I gave it a try on Friday afternoon and in ten minutes I created a little photography portfolio site that looks way better than anything I could have created with Google Sites or WordPress. Watch this short demo to see how you can create a portfolio site with Carrd.co.

Canva Websites

One of the things that I like about using Canva to create graphics and slideshows is that when I want to share slides or graphics with a wider audience I can publish as a nice, clean and simple website. In this video I demonstrate how to publish Canva slideshows as a simple stand-alone website. This video shows you how to turn any set of Canva graphics into a simple website.

Adobe Spark

Adobe Spark’s webpage creator offers a fantastic way to create simple websites in which your students can include images, text, and videos. Consider having your students arrange their pages chronologically so that the top of the page shows their work at the beginning of the year and then as viewers scroll down they see your students’ latest work. Click here for a video tutorial on how to use Adobe Spark.

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