According to the experts at TopTenReviews, this table presents the best of the best web hosting companies. Which one should you choose to host your site?
The answer: None of the above. Unfortunately, this outfit and tons of other review sites put profit ahead of objectivity when making their recommendations. The underlying motivation shows clearly in this video clip.
Finding a truly “good” web hosting company is probably the biggest challenge you’ll face when setting up your site. Word of mouth is a good place to start. But in the end you have to test-drive the service yourself before you really know if the fit is right.
For me, a “good” web host has to offer, at the minimum, the following:
- Money back guarantee
- Better Business Bureau rating of at least B+
- A telephone number that is answered within a reasonable amount of time
- 24/7 tech support from knowledgeable staff via chat, phone, or email
- Modern, reliable hardware with limited down time
- Generally positive comments from independent customer forums
- Full feature set, including cPanel and the Fantastico script installer
I have researched quite a number of web hosts but found precious few that satisfy these criteria. Among those that pass are Arvixe, Inmotion, and Host Gator. Any one of these would probably be a good choice.
But even if your experience is unsatisfactory, you can easily back up your entire site and transfer it to another provider. Intact. That’s one of the biggest advantages to going with a host that features the proprietary cPanal versus other control panels. It makes managing your site a breeze.
Once you have registered a domain name and chosen a web host, the next step is to connect them and start building your site. Look for details in Part III of this series.
More and more teachers are jumping on the bandwagon and creating some sort of web presence. Many teachers that I know have set up a blog as their base of online operations. Free services such as Blogger, WordPress, and EduBlogs make it so easy!
These free services are a great place to start. But if you’re like me, at some point you realize their limitations. Caps on storage space or bandwidth. No FTP capability. Unsightly advertising. Inability to use themes other than those provided. Limited customization. You can, of course, upgrade to a premium account to get some of these features. After all, outside of advertising, that’s how these services make their money.
But let’s say you want to expand your web presence with a wiki, bulletin board, forum, or Moodle. Unless your school is doing the hosting or footing the bill, you could end up with a hefty charge at the end of each month.
A more economical solution, and one that is ultimately more flexible and satisfying, is to host your own site. For one low, flat monthly fee, you can set up any number of blogs, wikis, Moodles, etc., and customize them as you like. This is also a very good option for teachers whose schools have unusually tough firewalls or less than cooperative system administrators.
Other self-hosting advantages include:
- No bothersome advertising
- Free email accounts with your own domain name
- Complete control of all your files and information
- Direct upload and download of these files to and from your server
- One-touch installation of WordPress, Moodle, and other scripts
- Complete site backup and restore capability
Where to start?
I would suggest first getting a domain name. Be wary of the “free domain for life” that some web hosts offer. Why? Because if the hosting company goes out of business, or is bought by another firm, your domain name could disappear or be held hostage to extract more money from you (I speak from experience).
Play it safe and get your own name from a third-party domain name registrar and manage it yourself. I use GoDaddy and have no complaints, but there are a number of others to choose from. Expect to pay $8-15/year to secure your domain name.
Tip: No matter where you register your domain, make SURE to keep a safe copy of your username and password. This info is vital for connecting your domain name with your website.
What’s next?
Now that you have a domain name, it’s time to go shopping for the right web host. Details coming up.
This post features a more specialized e-learning site, one that will guide you in creating and deploying your own e-learning materials for an online course you may be asked to teach some day. And yes, the course is 100% free of charge.
Online Instructor Training is one of many free subjects offered by the OpenCourseWare division of the University of California at Irvine. The course encompasses 10 areas of study in a completely self-access mode of instruction. No registration is required. Simply visit the site and click on “Begin Course.”
A new window will then open and present you with 10 study modules encased in a Moodle interface. Subjects range from “The Online Course Syllabus” to “Facilitating an Online Course,” and may include text (Word/PDF), audio, video, or other media to support the instruction. Two of the modules are dedicated to using Moodle. This is icing on the cake. Not only are you learning how to teach online, but acquiring basic proficiency in Moodle as well.
As you move through the modules, you can’t help but appreciate how much time and effort are required to develop a professional online course. At UC Irvine, for example, online instructors must build the following components into each lesson:
- Lesson introduction
- Learning objectives
- Special readings or terminology
- Topic 1, Topic 2, Topic 3
- Discussion prompts
- Homework assignment
- Lesson Summary
Teachers must also be “visibly” present to the class through regular content postings and updates, forum discussions, and other communications. Download a more detailed overview of UC Irvine’s course development guidelines here.
For anyone seriously considering teaching online, this training program should definitely get you moving in the right direction for planning, building, and eventually facilitating your course.
In this followup post, I want to share some additional free e-learning sites I’ve found on the Web. Some, like MIT, are standalone university sites, while others function more as course directories or repositories.
Stanford Continuing Studies offers a broad range of courses in Liberal Arts & Sciences, Creative Writing, and Professional & Personal Development. Courses are primarily taught by Stanford instructors and are open (free) to everyone. Stanford runs another site called Open Culture that tracks free online educational and cultural media. Lots of good links to education and language resources.
Visit Harvard@home and “experience some of the exciting research, teaching, and public addresses making news at Harvard University today — right from your desktop.” Harvard’s offerings are limited to about 60 topics and somewhat dated, but use lots of multimedia and are interesting from a teaching perspective.
Webcast.berkeley is a treasure chest of current and archived courses at UC Berkeley, offered in podcast and/or video format. Heavy on math and science, but I found some interesting courses in Japanese language and literature.
YouTube users may recognize the screenshot at the top of this post. It is a sliding menu of universities that provide content via the relatively new YouTube EDU channel. Once at the site, click an icon to see what each school offers. Or, choose Education from the site’s left navigation bar and you are presented with this month’s most viewed videos. Refine your search using the ‘Search YouTube EDU’ box.
Another hip e-learning site offering loads of free content (over 100,000 educational audio and video files) is Apple’s iTunes U. You’ll need iTunes installed on your computer to access it, but if you have an iPod or iPhone you can download lessons and take them with you. This is a fantastic resource. The video clip below should get you up and running with iTunes U in no time. Enjoy!
MIT is one of a growing number of top-tier universities worldwide offering free courses via e-learning. That’s right — free. You won’t get college credit. But you will learn from some very knowledgeable teachers who know how to explain complicated subject matter in a way that almost anyone can understand.
Tonight, I viewed a video lecture on linear algebra by MIT Professor Gilbert Strang. Do I like math? Not really, although I did well in it in high school. Was the video worthwhile? Yes, and the reason is that Professor Strang came off as a gifted teacher who could simplify abstract relationships in an interesting, engaging style.
If math isn’t your thing, try another offering from a repository of 1900 courses in subject areas ranging from Anthropology to Writing and Humanistic Studies. Many of these are complete with syllabuses, assignments, exams, and audio or video lectures.
In my next post I will introduce some additional sites that offer free e-learning courses from other respected universities and educational institutions.
After the Deadline is a free, “smart” resource for anyone who wants to improve their writing on the Web. Initially designed as a plugin for WordPress blogs, the program is also available as a Firefox add-on, and it is compatible with both Windows and Mac.
According to the website, After the Deadline “uses artificial intelligence and natural language processing technology to find writing errors and offer smart suggestions.” The program was designed to “help you write better blog comments, tweet with correct grammar, and compose professional messages.” The video clip above provides a good overview of its capabilities.
After watching the video and exploring the website, I think that After the Deadline shows tremendous potential in the wired ESL/EFL classroom, especially in composition classes.
I wonder if Sue Waters and her team at Edublogs will be offering this plugin to users of their WordPress-based blogging service? Just a thought.
How many times have you sat down in front of your computer with the very best intention of mastering the Microsoft Office suite of applications? Coffee cup at the ready while thumbing through a 1,200-page manual — there’s got to be a better way!
Sure, there are plenty of online training sites, both free and fee-based. But wouldn’t it be great if you could learn the ins and outs of Word, Excel, or PowerPoint while racking up points along the way?
Enter Ribbon Hero. According to Microsoft Office Labs, “Ribbon Hero is a game for Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, designed to help you boost your Office skills and knowledge. Play games (aka ‘challenges’), score points, and compete with your friends while improving your productivity with Office.”
If Ribbon Hero sounds like your cup of tea, download it for free.
Note: Ribbon Hero requires that you have Office 2007 or 2010 running on either Windows Vista or 7 (32/64 bit).
If you like to supplement your English classes with video content, you’re going to love this site. MovieClips contains a repository of over 12,000 popular movie clips and it is growing.
At the site’s core is a big search box that lets you query its database by actor, title, genre, and several other parameters, including dialogue. Not every movie is represented, of course. But you’ll be surprised at how many scenes turn up when you enter a famous quote. I got positive hits with “I’ll be back,” “Here’s looking at you, kid,” and of course, “How about a little fire, Scarecrow.”
The beauty is that the work of ripping films into segments and converting them to flash has been done for you. And the developers have apparently cleared copyright hurdles by keeping each clip under 2.5 minutes in length.
In the past I’ve created a number of listening and writing activities based on standard movie trailers. But I think that short, single-scene clips could provide more latitude in focusing on specific language forms and expressions, and cultural elements as well. In this sense I think MovieClips has loads of potential. Now, if they would just add an interactive quiz element …
PDFmyURL is a free online tool for converting any web page to PDF. To use it, simply visit the site, enter the URL of any website or blog, and click the orange “P” icon to the right. Presto! The conversion is virtually instantaneous, and you can download the file to your computer.
No software installation is required other than a PDF reader such as Adobe Reader or my personal favorite, Foxit Reader.
Why bother changing a perfectly good HTML file into PDF? I can think of several reasons. First, PDF files are small, portable and easy to share. Second, no Internet connection is required to view them. And since formatting is retained across platform, they display the same on PC or Mac. But another little known secret is that many e-book readers will display PDF files. Handy for reading news, blog posts, etc., on the go.
There was only one noticeable drawback that I found, namely that flash contents, including movies embedded from YouTube and Vimeo, were not visually represented 0n the pages I test converted. All other pictures seemed to display just fine, however.
I think this tool could be especially useful in non-wired class settings for displaying web content via projector or whiteboard or for distributing printed copies to students.
Here is a great video clip I happened upon which, besides making you feel good, could easily be incorporated into a lesson plan for ESL learners at this time of year.
Before viewing the clip you might ask several warm-up questions, such as “What do you know about the Salvation Army? Are all ‘armies’ military organizations?”
Using a projection device, play the video for the class. Pause at selected spots to solicit discussion. Here are some sample questions:
- Why do you suppose the man is ringing a bell?
- Do the passersby pay attention to him? Why or why not?
- We see a young group wearing aprons and carrying hand bells. Where do you suppose they are going, and why?
- Before long, people are stopping and staring at the Salvation Army stand on the sidewalk. Why this change in their behavior?
- What impact is this attention having on the original sole bell ringer? How do you suppose he feels?
- If YOU were there, would you feel like making a contribution to the Salvation Army? Why or why not?
Don’t know about you, but this video lifted my spirits immensely and encouraged me to make a contribution today. The cold, lonely Salvation Army volunteer standing outside the local Walmart looked me in the eye and said, “Thank you, sir. Merry Christmas.”