Please Explore! Instructors are encouraged to explore the various web-publishing possibilities listed below. Instructors are also welcome to consult with Instructional Technology Consultants (ITCs) to see how much support is available for any given assignment or situation. However, please keep in mind that the support available may be limited to posting a URL on the Ecampus course website to the appropriate blog or web site.
Copyright Considerations. One of the first things to think about when exploring these tools is whether the publically accessible will fall within Educational Fair Use guidelines if any material is copyrighted (more info). Some of the more advanced tools, ones that generally need to be purchased, include options for password protection so that material can be restricted for use by class members only.
Web-Publishing Categories
- Blogs. Originally conceived of as web-logs, they allow the author to publish text, images and links with simple web-editing tools. Google's Blogger is the best tool to explore the basic blogging tool. It is free and relatively easy to learn to use. Other blogging tools that allow greater degrees of customization are WordPress (UCLA help for using WordPress), Live Journal (free or subscription levels) and Blog Harbor (monthly subscription at different levels).
- Wikis. The word "wiki" is Hawaiian for “quick”. A Wiki is an authoring software which provides an alternative form of a “website” for a professor to use without having to learn HTML. It is also a powerful means of creating collaborative writing communities. WikiWiki Web was the first Wiki, released in 1995.
A simple, free wiki available online is pbwiki. In addition, MediaWiki is a popular wiki tool and is the software used by the Wikipedia. Wikis will available for use via "Moodle," which will be available in the future for UCLA faculty and TAs.
- Social Bookmarking. Allows you to publish and share an annotated list of web resources, essentially a public internet bookmarks list. See the example del.icio.us.
- Images. Currently, the two most widely-used photo-publishing web tools are Flickr and Photobucket, which both have free basic accounts or more advanced accounts at various subscription rates.
- Podcasting/Videocasting. Podcasting is publishing audio web content to which other individuals can subscribe. The most familiar source for podcasts is Apple's iTunes music store. There are many other available in this area of rapidly increasing technology. This site has information about podcasting and videocasting.
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iWeb is a simple, easy-to-use, web-publishing tool that allows you to use ready-made templates (without any knowledge of html) to create useful and sleek websites in a matter of moments. iWeb allows you to create websites complete with slideshows, text/audio/video blogs, and audio/video podcasts and have them ready to go online in a snap. Viewers of your webpage can subscribe to your podcast with one click or subscribe to your blog through an rss feed.” Click here for more information.
Categories Combined. Having described the categories above, it is important to note that many of these web tools are adding the functionality of other categories, and some all-in-one tools are now available (but not for free).
Multimedia Overview . For an overview of the multimedia possibilities of instructional technology that is supported by CDH and the Instructional Technology Consultants, please consult our multimedia overview page.
Contributed by mg. Last updated April 23, 2007 by SL