Help: High School Teacher looking to get started

It is quite easy to install Wordpress, Drupal or Moodle. You don't have to 'make' a website, it is usually it is a matter of 'click to install' on a shared server account.  I started making content here, then importing it into a number of websites I have developed.  I have found importing content into Wordpress the most user-friendly.  I have placed a number of activities at  www.webschool.org.uk   .  Of course you are free to download any of the activities. The embed function is also brilliant, and I was able to embed activities at   www.globalmatters.org/topics  which is a knowledge base website.

Hey guys,

1. a) Wordpress is probably the easiest platform to get started on.
   b) If you use this site, you can see a "Embed" button at the bottom of Content. Just put the markup from that in your html.
2. Ndla is in good, but in Norwergian

- Tom

Hi there, 

I advise you to go with drupal 7 I'm a teacher myself and the learning curve is huge for drupal but once you have it up and running ... the modular design of it is beautiful. .. and you will become addicted to extending the power of your site... I am using a distribution of drupal called openatrium. .. but opigno is a ready made distribution that has quite a few features that are amazing...

So modules that will help you a great deal as a teacher ...

H5p

Quiz 7x4

Certify to produce certificates for the completion of activities. .. plus the fact that h5p integrates with quiz... I also using the shs for standards for each lesson...

You can watch lynda.com lessons on youtube to get started with drupal installation and setup.. roughly cost you 10 usd a month for a virtual server but it is worth it.. specially if you want to show the students to aim big and cover more grounds ... my students love the certificates they use them in their portfolios I create about five activities a week and one certificate. .. 

If you want a ready made site you have to hire a professional developor (aka joubel) it will cost you but its worth it... plus you have keeo in mind you have to maintain the server yourself.. or pay the developer to maintain and update everything for you.. specially backing up your site as over time the site will crash... so a copy of your code and database is a must also drupal is a bit slow it is important to use some cache modules to help you speed up drupal... one more thing I use is the five star rating module to get feedback from the students as well as the surveys. ..

WARNING OTHER TEACHERS IN YOUR SCHOOL WILL HATE YOUR GUTS AND THERE IS NO TRUNING BACK UNLESS YOU HAVE THE POWER AND FUND TO MAKE IT FOR ALL... 

best of luck... if you have more questions let me know... 

Ps opigno is a good service they will provide you with hosting. .. i think cost is per user i use justhost or gaterhost.. for their basic package. .. and unlimited users...

Hmm i think i covered  everything .. oh and h5p is mobile ready so don't worry if you get ipads for your class or computers everthing will be reusable. . Best of luck once again...

Farrisimin

I have managed to embed content on my (educational) knowledgebase

  at   http://www.globalmatters.org/topics

If you're new to web site development then I'd suggest you start with a Google site. They're completely free, VERY easy to use and you can embed H5P content easily.

Some help from Google https://support.google.com/sites/?hl=en#topic=7184580

A good source of help, not from Google: https://www.steegle.com/google-sites/how-to

Google forms are an excellent resource and also have a quiz function built in. These forms have the option to send their data to a Google spreadsheet, which you can use for all sorts of things. I highly recommend looking into the additional functionality offered by using the third party addons for Forms and Sheets. With these it is possible to do a LOT of extra things.

Once you get into it there are all sorts of things you can do. Have a folder on your computer that is synced with Google drive, on the site you can show particular folders from your Google drive and give selective access to the files in that folder. This means you just need to save a file on your computer and it appears on the Google site for pupils to download/view or what ever. Using various addons to Sheets and Forms I setup a Google site with forms to collect free response answers. Addons (copydown and autocrat) processed the results and mail merged a copy of their answer, along with the mark scheme to the student and their teacher. I can't show you the site as I retired from teaching last summer so unfortuntely I don't have access to the site now. 

You can do all of this without a Googe apps domain for your school but it's defintely the way to go. It's free but can be a time consuming pain to setup. It gives each of your teachers and students a free google account with unlimited storage and extras not found in a normal Google account. It allows you to have granular control over access rights to the documents and folders shown on your site. It also opens up some extra possibilities on Google forms, meaning you can automatically verify who submitted the answers.

This probably sounds rather daunting, but it is a LOT easier than using Wordpress - for a school it is definitely the best option by far. I use Wordpress now and love it - but in a school setting there is nothing like Google.

Good luck