Lounge

Well it really depends on how detailed you want to go, if you want to spend any money and how much you want them to be able to achieve - and why . If they can get google accounts, then Google Sites is a nice way of making a simple website.Or there are free versions of professional web design programs that you can get (because they are older versions) such as Net Objects Essentials (I like this one) or another: Serif Webplus (That one is very like Publisher actually) Those last three examples cost no money and would be accesible to year 6. What you don't want is just to get them to make a website in Word (or Publisher)... Of course, there are some who would argue that they could work in pure html- and certainly, if you know it, it is worthwhile doing a little bit of the stuff first so they get the idea how websites really work - and then showing them the easy, WYSIWYG way! But I guess if your teacher who is doing the website teaching is not that computer literate then that is a non-starter. I'd suggest Google sites as they can play with them anywhere they are.

Making websites is just one of the many things I cover every year in my computer applications class for 7th and 8th graders.

One thing I've always had to be very careful about is that young students do not always know what is and is not appropriate to put out there for public viewing so I always have them make pages on our classroom intranet server. (Can be any old computer running a LAMP server.) I've tried many different web page editors and have settled on a couple of free ones - NVU and Kompozer but just recently discovered an even better one when I was searching for a way to create SCORM lessons - eXe.

"The eXe project developed a freely available Open Source authoring application to assist teachers and academics in the publishing of web content without the need to become proficient in HTML or XML markup. Resources authored in eXe can be exported in IMS Content Package, SCORM 1.2, or IMS Common Cartridge formats or as simple self-contained web pages."

First of all, eXe is also free, which makes it possible for the kids to do the same things at home that we do in the class without having to purchase any software. eXe is very easy to use, and it has a lot of built-in capability such as image galleries, text areas, questions, etc. Once a student makes their website, it is a simple matter of exporting a self-contained web site folder that can then be placed on the intranet server and linked to via a Moodle resource linke to a file or website.

Depending on the content, it can also be exported as a IMS content package, a Common Cartridge, or SCORM and then used in Moodle as an Activity.