Research Guides: Resources for Digital Scholarship: Digital Composition Tools

Tools

Website Building Tools

These are either free or modestly-priced website builders that allow users to create simple sites.

Pros: Full hosting and domain services are available at relatively low cost. Design is flexible. Widgets and other added functionality is available for websites. Use responsive design, which adjusts layout of pages to fit the screen size (desktop, tablet, mobile phone, etc.).

Cons: They are limited in structure. There are some bad templates out there that can result in horrible design. You are often signing away considerable rights by signing up.

Weebly
This is likely the easiest system to use of the three. Make flexible, free websites. As you have lots of flexibility, it's easy to make sites that aren't that beautiful.
Squarespace
Some people prefer this tool as the sites are so frequently beautiful, but it's not as flexible as weebly. It's also not always free. You can use a trial account, but at a certain point, you'll be asked to pay.
Wix
This has some beautiful templates. It's less flexible on immediate start-up than weebly, but it's also easy to use.
Tumblr
Many students are already comfortable with Tumblr. If you are, you can do many interesting things with it. It can be a bit limiting, but is simple and powerful.
Wordpress
A sophisticated content management system. Active developer community. Clean design and many themes are available. Responsive design, which keeps your site looking clean on mobile devices, tablets, and desktops. Easy integration with popular services and tools. Easy to upgrade and update. Multi-site networks available. On the flip side, it has the steepest learning curve of all the tools listed on this page. Too much flexibility can be a drawback. Popularity makes it a big target for hackers. Post-page architecture can be limiting.

Presentation Tools

These are tools primarily for giving presentations in public or on the web, but can be adapted to display a collection of items or to tell a story.

Haiku Deck
Pros: Pretty, concise presentations are easy to build. All images are from the Creative Commons, eliminating potential copyright issues. Cloud-based, so no software is necessary. Files are exportable in a variety of formats.

Cons: Users are extremely limited in word length. iPad is required.
Microsoft PowerPoint
Pros: It's ubiquitous and interoperable. Powerful and simple.

Cons: The user is confined to a linear structure. You must have the software installed. It's easy to fall into the "bulleted list" design trap.
Keynote
Pros: More design options than PowerPoint, but works in a similar way. Simple.

Cons: Only available for MacOS X and iOS. Not exportable to other formats.

Annotation Tools

ThingLink
ThingLink allows you to annotate videos, or images (or text that has been made into an image). If you want to use the video part, contact Laurie Allen (lallen) or Mike Zarafonetis (mzarafon) and we'll set you up with an account.
Prezi
Pros: It's not PowerPoint, meaning that it's more flexible, and can show scale/layers/relationships in more creative ways. It's a web-based platform, so no software is required.
Cons: Some prezi's can be dizzying and some people find the learning curve a little steeper than some other things.

Check out the "Do it yourself prezi tutorial" for help