Creating Websites for Educators

[International Expat]

As an international educator, you may need to create a website. It could be that your school needs a site in English and doesn't have the resources to hire outside people to do it. You may want to create a website to showcase your teaching resume to impress potential recruiters. You may even want a website for your class to communicate with parents about homework, policies, etc.  Or, you may want to teach a class on building a website. I require all of my students to have a portfolio.  It doesn't matter the reason; website creation is something you may want to do or be tasked with at some point.

But the question is – how do you do it? You know there are platforms out there that can help make it happen. But which one do you choose?

We've looked at many different platforms that international educators can use to build websites, and today we want to tell you the ones we think are the best.

1.    Google Sites. This is the one to choose if you are going to be working with other people on creating the site. It is specifically designed for collaboration among your peers, without compromising the security of the site itself. It has recently been updated with new features that allow you to make sure your site displays well on mobile devices, insert content directly from Google Drive, embed external content, and move content around the page easily during editing.

2.    WordPress. This is an old standby. It's very easy to create a site, you get a ton of backgrounds to choose from, and you can click and drag various features onto your pages. People have been using WordPress for years, and it's reliable. It is not, however, anywhere near as collaboration-friendly as Google Sites. However, it is something that is very easy to use and something that will be around for a long time.

3.    Wix is another easy-to-use drag-and-drop website builder. It uses an artificial intelligence system to help you build the site, and offers suggestions for improvement. The one downside is that their service is “freemium,” meaning while their ads say it's free, they will try to charge you for many of their tools, for removing ads, and for features that your school requires.

4.    Weebly. This site offers many of the same drag-and-drop systems as Wix, but doesn't hit you up for money when you want to improve the site. Instead, it charges you a fixed monthly fee, which can help your school budget for it. All the actions needed to build a site can be accessed through easy-to-use widgets. You can use the totally free version but you may be limited in the things you want to do.

Those are the ones we like the best. If you've used any of them to build a website and have additional comments on them, let us know. That's the whole point of being a part of the International Educators community!

 

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