Students' publishing their websites

Do the students actually publicly publish their websites?

Yes. I guess they don’t have to but it’s a part of the Unit lessons. Once they publish there are still lessons on style sheets to be completed. My students were excited to see their websites online and to be able to show them to their families.

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When I set up my student accounts (middle school 6th - 8th) I did not allow students to share because they were younger than 13 (mostly 6th and 7th). Now that we’ve completed the websites, it looks like I’m going to have to override the setting because I don’t know of any other way students can share their websites with their peers for editing. I hope this is OK.

This is completely your choice. I often have students simply switch seats and look through on their computers so they’re editing code and content at the same time. I don’t know the set up of your classroom, but this is what works for me. I don’t love allowing them to share without parent permission, but that’s just my view on it.

3 years later ~ any further thoughts on letting students share? Mine are 7th & 8th. It seems like not letting them share sort of makes the Unit “practice only” and I worry that lessens their enthusiasm for making a personal website. I did Unit 3 first so just getting ready to start Unit 2 and helping them figure out what content to put on their website is something I want to do a better job with this year.

My thoughts are that I do enable sharing, but that I also teach them appropriate sharing. If I see a student who is creating something and oversharing or including content that is inappropriate, I can turn sharing off for that student.

If a student really wants to create a webpage and share it, me turning off sharing isn’t going to stop them really, because there are other places where they can create content and share it with anyone including social media and/or other web creation sites.

It hasn’t really been a problem in my classes as most kids use it for school assignments and aren’t really sharing personal information on their websites.

Mike

I’d have to second what @mwood said. I do allow students to share now. We’ve had changes in policies at the district level that have made things easier over the last 3 years so my position on this has changed a bit. I have made a more direct effort to include appropriate sharing in my digital citizenship lessons and even as a part of my website rubrics.

Thanks for your reply. Would you be willing/able to share one of your website rubrics?

I would, but I only have them on Google Classroom rubrics. Does anyone know how I can share those? Ultimately, they are simply adjusted versions of the Code.org rubrics available with the lessons. I reword a few things & make them suit my needs.

I would check your district policies and state laws.
My district did not allow any sharing for students under 13. And we had to always have parent permission for any students 13 and older. Yes, for a lot of students it was just practice and for peer editing I did as mentioned above and had students move seats.
My state has laws protecting student privacy which our district bases their policies on.

While the student’s websites are public, there isn’t a public directory for Web Lab, and the URLs are too random to guess.

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Good point. That’s why I taught them what they could and couldn’t share. In our district, names are ok, but if they also share what school they attend, it’s not allowed, so I make sure their pages are on a topic of their interest and I suggest they share no information about themselves (including names).

Most districts will have those kinds of policies which makes the “all about myself” assignments so many teachers like to use not so great an idea if sharing is turned on (even though I agree it would be impossible for anyone to randomly stumble across their site).

Mike

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How do I let the students share their websites? Where do I find the “share” button?

Help Please/Thank you.

The teacher needs to allow sharing, described in the article below.

On the student’s page, there should be a share button near the top of the page toward the left a bit.

Keep in mind that Web Lab does not have a built-in publish function. They will need to copy the web address to their website and send it to their classmates or teacher through email or another medium.