While the name was inspired by an old fashioned "Make It & Take It" craft gathering, the concept of a "Website Make & Take" is the same.
The basics ingredients include: Some sort of gathering (i.e. a class), a common interest (that of creating your own website), and finally some hard workers (you!). So if we have those things and a decent Internet connection we can accomplish great things.
Best of all the Website Make & Take is a low cost concept. For the cost of a domain name we can setup and take advantage of a myriad of free services to create a highly functional, easy to maintain website.
Services like Blogger, Flickr, Diigo and more make it easy and affordable to setup and maintain your own site and look like a pro doing it.
I will have more to come as I intend to migrate the resources I am currently using to help others setup and maintain their own websites to this blog.
Check back again and I will see you soon! ~Nicole
Getting Started.
First things first (as Stephen Covey would say) we need to make a blog.
To begin, go to step '1' and we will create an account to save the accounts and passwords that we will be creating in conjunction with our blogs.
"A what?" you say.Because you may want to remember this stuff later, we will first go through a couple of quick preparatory steps that will save us many headaches in the future, then we will jump in with both feet and get started creating our blog.
"A blog." - A blog is just a website that is quick and easy to use that will allow you to share your stuff with the world, or just your class, as the case may be. Either way, it's fast, anyone can do it, and best of all, it's FREE!
To begin, go to step '1' and we will create an account to save the accounts and passwords that we will be creating in conjunction with our blogs.
- We will create an account on Passpack.com to save our passwords.
- We will send ourselves an email with our account information for Passpack.com and a link to this site (makeandtake.me).
-----Pause here while we watch a helpful video about creating a Blogger Blog----------- - We will go to Blogger.com and create a new account.
- We will save our account information on our site at Passpack.com.
- We will customize our Blogger sites and post our first post.
- We will create and save a mock assignment to our SVSU webspace.
- We will add a link on our blogs to our mock assignment that we saved in our SVSU webspace.
- We will test our blogs and continue to add more stuff.
Website Make & Take Spinoffs
I have really enjoyed working with my students and coworkers to create these highly functional and easily maintained sites. With that in mind, I approached my Administration Technology Procedures class with a unique project in mind this Summer. We just wrapped up the course and things went swimmingly. Here's what we did:
We approached the topics to be covered in the class from a research standpoint and used blogging technologies to share our research and essays. Each student also prepared online personal portfolio's in combination with electronic and print versions of their resumes with an emphasis on personal branding using professional social networks such as LinkedIn, VisualCV, Diigo, BusinessCard2, Blogger, Wordpress and Twitter.See more of what we did, including the work of my talented students, Clyde (blog, portfolio), Amanda (blog, portfolio), and Glenna (blog, portfolio), on the Administration Technology Procedures weblog!
Make & Take Toolkit
Check out the resources in Make and Take's Toolkit located on the sidebar on the right. Links to like sites like Blogger, Wordpress, Flickr, Picnik, Scribd, A.nnotate and SlideShare are located there. Please explore them and don't be afraid to test anything out, these sites are free and some offer low cost upgrades to even more features.
Below that you will find some additional links to some essential resources: Keepass, Passpack and Diigo. Keepass and Passpack are used to store passwords in a secure and portable manner.
Keepass can be installed on a personal computer or on a thumb drive, while Passpack is accessible anywhere you have Internet access. Keepass secures your passwords using AES and Twofish encryption algorithms. Passpack uses the AES-256 encryption algorithm. Both programs are decrypted only by using your secret passkey.
Diigo is an excellent application which allows you to easily bookmark, share and categorize all of your important bookmarks. It also allows you to explore the bookmarks of others with whom you share interests. Without the sharing feature Diigo is easily the most handy thing any savvy Internet researcher could get their hands on.
The "lists" feature of Diigo sends it way above the top though. In Diigo you can create a limitless amount of topic based lists in which you can organize the order of the saved bookmarks. This is very handy for sharing a list of resources on a given topic with co-workers, students or friends.
Lists can be shared by URL or send a number of different ways through both traditional and social media communication outlets. For more on Diigo, check out their youtube video.
Below that you will find some additional links to some essential resources: Keepass, Passpack and Diigo. Keepass and Passpack are used to store passwords in a secure and portable manner.
Keepass can be installed on a personal computer or on a thumb drive, while Passpack is accessible anywhere you have Internet access. Keepass secures your passwords using AES and Twofish encryption algorithms. Passpack uses the AES-256 encryption algorithm. Both programs are decrypted only by using your secret passkey.
Diigo is an excellent application which allows you to easily bookmark, share and categorize all of your important bookmarks. It also allows you to explore the bookmarks of others with whom you share interests. Without the sharing feature Diigo is easily the most handy thing any savvy Internet researcher could get their hands on.
The "lists" feature of Diigo sends it way above the top though. In Diigo you can create a limitless amount of topic based lists in which you can organize the order of the saved bookmarks. This is very handy for sharing a list of resources on a given topic with co-workers, students or friends.
Lists can be shared by URL or send a number of different ways through both traditional and social media communication outlets. For more on Diigo, check out their youtube video.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
