Padlet

What is Padlet?

Padlet is an online resource. It allows you to create a bulletin board, where teachers and students can share links, pictures, documents, videos and more. The main advantage of this resource is privacy: when you create a padlet, you can customise the settings so that only the people who have the link can access and edit it. Or you can be the sole editor. Or you can leave it for public access, the choice is yours! This way you can create a secure space for you and your students, accessible via any computer or mobile device.

Here I leave you a link to my own padlet, about Biology. Enjoy!

https://padlet.com/serbro7/894ky8bpwgfd

A blog on Biology

Allow me to introduce you to The Panda's Thumb!

The Panda's Thumb is a result of collaborative work between several scientists, including Jack Krebs, president of Kansas Citizens for Science.

This blog's main focus is the criticism of the "intelligent design" and creationist movements.

https://pandasthumb.org/

This blog is very interesting because it talks about a heavily debated subject (at least in the USA) and it deconstructs the creationists' arguments from the very base and exposes their internal inconsistencies.

Comparing different CMS

In my last post, I've talked about an example of a Content Management System, Joomla! But there are more CMS available, such as Drupal, PHP-Nuke, SPIP, Zikula, Mestre a Casa, Moodle and several more.

First of all, let's see Drupal. There are two examples of sites made on that platform, and both of them are fairly high-quality and easy to navigate, which is very convenient for anyone who is visiting them for the first time.

http://www.salesianos.edu/alicante/

http://www.iesenricsolerigodes.com/drupal/

Websites made via Joomla! are also of fairly high quality. Here are two examples:

http://www.iesdoctorbalmis.com/

http://cavanilles.org/

The same could be said about PHP-Nuke, SPIP and Zikula:

http://ieslosangeles.es/index.php

http://nsd.hhdc.net/

http://inscapnorfeu.cat/intraweb/index.php

Some websites made with Mestre a Casa require a little bit of polishing, either in their format (some tables don't fit inside the general frame) or their distribution of information (little visibility of the information menu):

http://mestreacasa.gva.es/web/ieshaygon

http://mestreacasa.gva.es/web/fpabeniassent/

All these sites are basically information about different schools. Personally, I tend to like more those that offer useful information about the school on their front page in a clear way, rather than those that emphasize news and events and hide the information somewhere in the corner. This site is a good example of the former and this one, of the latter.

Tools for creating a website

Joomla!

Today we'll talk about Joomla!

Joomla! is a free and open-source Content Managing System (CMS) for publishing web content. Basically, it's an online infrastructure that allows you to create your own websites, with multiple templates, an easy-to-use interface that doesn't require prior programming knowledge and plenty of customisation options. 

It is supported and maintained by volunteers, available in over 70 languages and its sources of revenue are advertisement, partners and sponsors.

Joomla! also offers a wide variety of extensions to enhance your website. These extensions are applications that serve a given purpose.

As an example, I've chosen vQuiz. This tool provides the ability to create various quizzes to evaluate respondent's level of knowledge. This way, you can create a trivia quiz, a personality quiz and, surveys, polls and many more. 

https://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension/living/education-a-culture/vquiz/

Use in education

But, of course, what interests us more is what use we can give this application in education! For educational purposes, online quizzes offer many advantages, the main one being the instant delivery of results to students, which enhances the feedback each student receives and avoids the waiting time for the teacher to correct the test.