Why Should All Students Learn and Use WordPress

Cutting-edge technology is on guard of educational advances. The last decade is associated with a tremendous technological boom. New software, advanced generation of devices, unique services, and tools facilitate access to education for more people. Nowadays, it’s hard to find a school, college, or university without that website where everyone can get to know all the necessary information about the institution’s activities.

Digital technologies eliminate barriers, shorten distances, save time, and partially reduce expenses. A whole generation of students doesn’t imagine an educational process without gadgets, interactive desks, and multimedia content. It’s essential to use creativity and imagination to grab their attention and keep them involved. Nowadays, all communication goes online. Semester schedule, requirements for academic assignments, deadlines, notes, presentations, etc. can be uploaded on a website. Having a single source of information available at any time eliminates many problems and stimulates students to accomplish assignments on time. WordPress serves as a basis for building such a website and has become the favorite software at the time of creating educational oriented content websites.

What Is WordPress?

WordPress (WordPress.org) is an open-source content management system that appeared on May 27, 2003. It is free software; you can download, install, use, and configure it depending on your needs. The design of this software facilitates the creation of almost any type of website. Nowadays, WordPress has become one of the most efficient and popular platforms for doing business on the Internet. It powers more than one-quarter of all websites. WordPress developers created a unique tool that allows websites’ customization depending on the purpose, owners’ preferences, and target audience.

WordPress’s undeniable advantage consists of excellent technical support and almost unlimited features that allow for editing, updating, and modifying the content quickly and easily. There is no need to have prior knowledge of programming or designing websites to use WordPress. You can find tons of materials and tutorials about the effective use of this software. Therefore, it’s worth mentioning that developers crafted an intuitive and user-friendly interface, easy to manage. WordPress functionality allows you to customize the website by using advanced features. Using different inbuilt plugins, you can add contact forms, analytics engines, membership areas, and other tools to empower your website and generate more traffic. Not to mention that designers created various options to change the aesthetics. WordPress allows you to change the background, select a new color theme, create sliders, upload a new logo, and all this without coding.

WordPress and Higher Education

WordPress can be convenient for students. It’s a must-use tool for those studying a career in programming. Nevertheless, the digital era favors the fusion of technology with almost all disciplines and sciences. Students who study careers in marketing, journalism, Digital, Linguistics, and other specialties can find learning and using WordPress useful to increase their effectiveness and improve academic performance. Based on the apparent benefits that the proper use of WordPress software can bring to the students’ community, we decided to focus on WordPress’s impact on the students’ community and educational system in general.

First and foremost, it’s worth highlighting the marked shift towards online/distance education. As a consequence, there is a rising demand for high-quality educational content and materials. Internet sources facilitate access to information. WordPress is one of the most efficient tools for it and can be used for various academic purposes; to enhance the educational process and motivate both students and teachers. WordPress functions enable teachers to upload academic plans and share lessons content beforehand. It’s a unique chance to share it and get feedback from colleagues to improve and get acquainted with new educational approaches and alternative learning methods.

Undeniable functional advantages of WordPress:

• variability of themes and plugins;
• high reliability and trustworthiness;
• user-friendly interface and functionality;
• comparatively inexpensive;
• permanent updates;
• search engine (browser) optimization;
• mobile-friendly design.

Edublogs

Nowadays, blogs form an integral part of social life. Education blogs occupied the niche and continue gaining popularity. College and university teachers can use blogs as an additional tool to encourage and motivate students to learn. A teacher can set up a virtual classroom in the form of a blog and publish tips, notes, exciting content, with an option for students to comment and download it. Interactive activities and digitized learning process favors engagement and enhances performance. In their turn, students can share information regarding academic assignments, interchange ideas, and brainstorm in a virtual conference.

Blogs facilitate communication between teachers and students. The information about academic assignments, requirements, deadlines, and schedule available and located in the same source saves time and nerves. WordPress allows us to publish, edit, and update the information quickly and keep the followers updated.

An educational website designed and empowered with WordPress guarantees easy and quick access to information. It can perform a virtual assistant role, creating an entertaining atmosphere and unique learning experience by combining traditional lectures and notes with cutting-edge technologies, interactive presentations, and video and audio content.

WordPress as a Key to Build a Successful Career

A modern job market suffers from tough competition and exaggerated expectations of employers in a particular manner. At the time of applying for a vacancy, the HR team requires a lot of applicant information, and one of the most important is a portfolio. WordPress tools and functions allow you to craft it. Creating an online electronic portfolio is a solution for future translators, copywriters, designers, photographers, journalists, etc.

WordPress allows students to make extra money too. Are you surprised? You can create a website and provide services to other students. You get double benefits, practice your writing skills, and have additional income. The software has inbuilt plugins and various templates that allow you to craft almost any written content. With the help of its functions, you can design almost any type of website, starting from simple websites to eCommerce marketplaces. Remember that you don’t need to have coding experience to handle WordPress functions.

Nevertheless, to become an advanced userand perform professional-level tasks, you do need to train specific skills. Keep calm, learning WordPress can take time, but it’s worth it. Get prepared to immerse yourself in the community of like-minded users that support each other and contribute to the service’s development. Each user can upload plugins, themes, additional features, and get feedback from the readers.

Let’s focus on the benefits that WordPress can bring to your future career:

• Teamwork. WordPress teaches you teamwork principles, where joint efforts build the integrated system that functions perfectly.

• Problem-solving. Remember, when starting to create a website, you must have a clear goal in mind. It’s essential to conduct research to figure out what kind of website you want to design. Whether your target is to generate traffic by getting push notifications, or you want to popularise the content. During the process of website development, you will face challenges, and the final result will depend on your reactions. Problem-solving based on logic thinking is another ability that WordPress aims to upgrade.

• Research and analytical thinking. These two are the pillars of significant website development. Before starting the design process, you need to surf the Internet and find appropriate ideas to build your platform. Using various data and website analytics, you can experiment and simulate interaction with your website in order to find the optimal mode of operation.

• Strategic thinking. Learning WordPress is handy for training your strategic skills. When creating a website, you need to follow step by step procedure and prognosticate users behavior. To make his/her website navigation intuitive, you need to foresee users’ actions ahead and focus on functionality and user experience.

• Technical skills. Depending on the career you are studying and the job you would love to find in the future, you might need different skills and knowledge. However, in the digital world, experience in the technical field would be useful. While learning WordPress functionalities, you will get acquainted with the principles of coding, web development, design, writing, etc. Having well-developed technical skills is a considerable advantage during the job selection process.

• Understanding the mechanisms. Nowadays, many job processes have become automated. Numerous tools facilitate data storage and processing and stimulate productivity. It’s essential to understand the mechanism and sequence of actions of each software to improve the effectiveness. WordPress allows you to immerse yourself in the inner circle of software development and get familiar with it.

• Organizational skills. Being organized and responsible is highly valued by employers. Qualitative analytical reports based on experimental research allow you to consider the perspectives and program future actions in advance by developing a well-structured plan. WordPress trains to track progress and, if necessary, adjust the strategy.

Communication skills. We can’t skip the considerable impact of the learning process on communication skills. Starting a blog is a unique chance to practice communication. Share content, get feedback, socialize, and interact with your readers. In this way, you will be perfectly prepared for speaking, emailing, interviewing, and other activities necessary in every-day working life.