Wix is a website builder and domain host that enables anyone to create a free website without coding skills. Building a website at Wix is straightforward: sign up for an account, choose a template, edit the website in the drag and drop editor, and preview the changes made before publishing the website. Wix offers two options for building sites, Wix Editor and Wix ADI (Artificial Design Intelligence). Using Wix Editor, users can select a ready-to-use template from hundreds of templates and utilize a drag-and-drop approach to build out pages. Wix ADI can create a website for users from scratch after users answer a few questions about what they need from a website. The Editor and ADI are both free to use; however, if users want to connect their own domain and remove Wix ads from their websites, they will need to get a paid plan. Otherwise, their websites’ names are shown as “username.wixsite.com/sitename” and display Wix ads. Wix offers several ways to support users, including tutorials and a community forum.
Wix also has a free portal set up for teachers, Wix Education, where teachers can use Wix as a classroom management platform to manage students’ websites and projects. Wix Education meets FERPA regulations and has a help center to support teachers.
When teaching online, staying connected with students and communicating with parents and guardians is essential. Creating a teacher website to serve as a learning community hub can help teachers foster an engaging educational environment. On a teacher website, teachers can provide lesson resources and class notes, post assignments or homework sheets, share activity information, and showcase student accomplishments. A teacher website could effectively keep students, parents, guardians, and other stakeholders in the loop.
Wix can be used:For teachers who are new to web design, Wix offers a variety of education website templates specific to the school, online education, and classes. All the education website templates are provided under the Community category. Teachers can also browse through other pre-designed templates to find one they would like to use if they do not want a specific theme under Education. All the templates work seamlessly with the apps in the Wix Market, such as PDF previews to allow visitors to view the PDF documents directly, to increase the functionality of a Wix site. Sites created on Wix work consistently on laptops, tablets, and mobile devices in multiple browsers.
When teachers identify a template to use, they can start thinking about organizing the content on a site. Some content may stay the same across semesters, such as classroom expectations, and other content, such as learning resources, may need to change to fit students’ dynamic needs. With Wix, teachers can hide pages from their sites’ menu if they do not need the page on their sites right now or they want to repost it the following year. Hidden pages still appear in search engines, and teachers can prevent search engines from indexing their sites in the Editor on Wix.
If teachers want to give students access to create content to demonstrate their learning, Wix Education Beta could be a good choice. After teachers create their educator account and send out invites to sign up, students can create their student accounts. Due to laws and regulations, Wix Education is designed for students over the age of 13.
Before implementing Wix, teachers should check with the school IT department to ensure they can use Wix in class. This is because Wix, including Wix Education, is partnering with schools and educational programs which target students over age 13. Wix identifies that they collect and use teachers’ personal and non-personal information to further develop and improve their services. Personal information includes user name, email address, phone number, and non-personal information, including visiting data. All Wix websites, inducing those created through Wix Education, are fully secure and compliant with online safety guidelines.
Wix provides a list of accessible website templates with built-in accessibility features for users to use. These accessible templates only include basic accessibility features, such as accessible heading structures and color contrast. Teachers need to manually add advanced accessibility features such as alt text to their sites. Wix also provides a Multilingual function in the Wix App Market to serve users who are non-native speakers. A website can be automatically translated into multiple languages when implementing this app. Wix Multilingual provides more than 180 languages.