Homestead is a website creation tool that is available for anyone to create their own website. Homestead is a great tool for teachers to make classroom websites or to use with older children to create their own websites. Some of the strengths of Homestead are that it is relatively easy to use, their are tons of designs and options available when creating your website, and the website is easily accessible. However, there are a few drawbacks to this site. The biggest weakness of Homestead is that it costs $4.99/month. However, there is a 30-day free trial so that you can experiment with it to see whether or not it is worth the money. It might be difficult to get the school system to agree to paying for this tool.

This tool could be used for child-directed activities. However, I think it would be more appropriate for older children if you choose to let the children create their own websites using this tool. Creating a website using this tool is fairly easy and I think that older elementary children would be able to use this tool to create their own websites. Teacher supervision would be necessary and children might need a little bit of guidance, especially at the beginning. However, I think it could also be a beneficial tool for the teacher to use to keep the parents updated about classroom activities. Children could participate in helping the teacher create the website and keep it up to date.

Lastly, I think this tool would be great to foster creativity in children. Older children will be able to choose from hundreds of designs and create their own website on anything they can imagine. Editing the website is fairly easy and children have tons of options for how they want their website to look. I think this could be an excellent tool for children to express their creativity about something that they are learning in class.

Wikispaces is an excellent tool for creating a website for a classroom. Children or teachers can create the website and continually update it. It seems to be a pretty good website since this is a wikispace!

Homestead is a site for creating your own websites. It would probably be better for teachers to use because it might be a little bit confusing for kids. However, with teacher guidance, children might be successful using this site. Another thing to be aware of is that Homestead does cost $4.99/month to use so it may not be an option for some teachers.

http://www.2learn.ca/webauthoringtool/kidscreateyourpage.html

This is an excellent tool for children to use. The site is set up with easy to follow steps in which you choose different aspects of your website. This is a great tool for beginners.