Designing A Website For Your Class

Originally Posted At: http://www.teach-nology.com/Articles/design_site/

Another great tutorial from TeAch-nology.com! The Web Portal For Educators! (http://www.teach-nology.com)

**What's All the Hype?**

It's apparent that there seems to be a rush for people to design a personal web page for all sorts of reasons. Educators are challenged more and more to create a web page to keep current with what's happening in the world of technology and teaching. If you check just about any school district, you'll see that at least two or three of their teachers have web pages. But is it worth the time? Is it difficult to create? Are there any risks involved? Most importantly, is it educationally beneficial? A beginner, making a web page, will need to put in a minimal number of hours to develop a "simple" web site. But to create a "significant" web site, one that will ultimately benefit students, a great deal of thought and time is required. Like any effective teaching plan requiring time and resourcefulness, it is no different when you create a web site for your students to access. However, if you have an extensive, well organized plan, the computing part is easy and getting easier everyday.

**The Benefits**

A well-designed website will greatly enhance communication between you and your students. Students will feel more at ease knowing that they can contact you when school is not in session. One of the great benefits of a website is the increased communication between you and the parents of your students. This means of communication also allows parents an easy way to stay in contact > with school related issues.

In this tutorial, we will examine free services available to help you make a web page, the process of designing your own independent site, neat web design add-ons, creating a newsletter, what should your page should have, and sites that can help you get started.

**Free Services That Can Help You**

There are plenty of free services that give you the ability to design and maintain a web site for your classes. Some of these services are educator-centered and others are for just about anybody. The best thing about these services is that they provide you both with a means for making a web page and provide you with space on an Internet server (so that you can store your pages on the web and publish it for the world). As with anything free, there is a catch. In return for the free tools and web space, these services post advertising on your web site. The advertising is out of your control. You cannot choose your own domain name. Let's say you want your web address to be www.thelittleschoolonthehill.com. Free services will not support this. You also lose a great deal of creative control because these services use web layout templates. Your district site will look like the other 40,000 schools on their services. So much for trying to standout and be noticed.

Educator-Oriented Web Page Services:

1. School Notes-http://schoolnotes.com/

SchoolNotes.com complements school websites by allowing teachers to post school information on the world-wide-web without worrying about HTML or FTP because there is no programming required! And best of all, SchoolNotes.com is a free community service!

2. TeAch-nology.com- http://www.teach-nology.com/web_tools/web_site/

Many educators throughout the world have been contacting us. They have expressed interest in learning how to create a web site that can be used with their students. In the true spirit of TeAch-nology.com, we now offer a simple, and most importantly, FREE method that can be used to create your own personal web site.

General FREE Web Services:

1. Homestead.com- http://www.homestead.com/

Homestead is consistently rated the best site for designing your own web page, both in ease of use and power. We definitely agree with critics that this site is easy and powerful. With no web design experience whatsoever, you could have your site up and running within twenty minutes. This site also gives you access to free clip art, animated images, and pre-written java applets that add spunk to your site without taxing your brain.

2. MSN- http://communities.msn.com/personalhomepages/

MSN developed an idea called a community. This is where groups of people create their own piece of cyberspace. For example, you can share photos of your new puppy. Developing a site on MSN is clear-cut and easy. With a company as powerful as Microsoft behind you, you're sure to offer the latest technology in an easy-to-use format.

**The Design Process: Build It**

The first step in making your web site is to actually write the programming code for the web pages. Most web pages are written in a simple computer language called Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). This is the language you're going to want to concentrate on at first because it is the easiest of the languages. As you get more advanced, you will want to learn to write in multiple languages to increase the interactivity of your site.

Writing in HTML can be accomplished in one of two ways: the easy way and the hard way. The hard way is learning to code by hand. There are many popular books available that can help you achieve this. It is extremely useful to understand HTML, but if you're just looking to make a small site (50 pages or less), you may want to consider using a graphical web-editor page, which is the easy way. These programs allow you to design a web page in the same way you would use a word processing program to create a document.

The most popular graphical web-editors include Microsoft Frontpage, Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver, and Allaire Homesite. It seems as if everyone has his or her favorite. Each of these programs are powerful in their own right. The TeAch-nology.com staff seem to agree that Macromedia's Dreamweaver is probably the best product. We base this on ease of use and functionality.

If you want make an appealing web site, you may need more than just an editor to get the job done. You may notice that most sites have a very appealing visual look and feel to their sites. This is accomplished by using various programs which manipulate images. The industry standard for graphic design is Adobe's Photoshop. Photoshop is a very difficult program for new comers, not to mention it costs about five hundred dollars. Some very useful replacements that aren't as expensive, but have a good bit of power, include Microsoft's Photodraw and Macromedia's Fireworks. A great deal of teachers that we work with find Microsoft's Photodraw pretty ease to use.

**The Design Process: Show It to the World**

For some reason a great deal of people seem to think that once you have made an HTML document, your page is on the web. This is not the case. Think of it like any other document. You have to print it out for the world see it! Printing, in the case of the web, involves transferring your HTML document to a web server. Once it's on the server, if you know the address, you can access the page online.

You can get web space free, or if you want your own domain name, you can pay for space on a server. The going rate for the pay services is twenty dollars for one hundred megabytes of space per month. There are plenty of free sites that will host your web site for free including:

Yahoo! Geocities- http://geocities.com

Free Servers- http://www.freeservers.com/

Tripod- http://www.tripod.lycos.com/

Once you have acquired web space, all that is left to do is to transfer the HTML file(s) you made on your computer to the web server that has your reserved space. Most free services provide you with a method for transferring files via their web page. Most paid services ask you to use a transfer file via an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program. The best known FTP programs include Fetch and WS-FTP. Both are free for download. Using these programs, you can control your computer files and the web server's files at the same time. You can delete, rename, and transfer files between the two computers.

**What Should a Teacher Site Have on It?**

1. Class Calendar

2. Relevant links for students to learn more about content. Also, for you to learn more about the subject matter. For help in this area, check our Teachers' "Subject Matter" Section.

3. Links that make your subject more fun- For help, check our Teachers' "Sites To Use With Students" Section.

4. Contact Information- This can include ways that students or parents can contact you. However, you may not want to include your home phone or any personal information. There are ways to set-up a separate e-mail account just for your professional use. You can do that by clicking here.

5. Materials- Anything important that you hand out in class can be posted on-line.

6. Class Rules and Guidelines- In this section, you can explain what materials your students need for your class and any other consistent information that students > need to be successful in your class.

7. Homework- Posting of assignments helps to keep students on track. This section can also offer students help with any assignments. This section can also be a depository for what students need to accomplish and a reminder of what needs to be done.

8. Biography- Tell students about your academic and professional background. You can also include interests, accomplishments, etc.

9. Course Description- Explain what students will be learning, goals, objectives, procedures that will be used in teaching and learning, timelines, etc.

10. Your Most Favorite Sites- Share the educational sites or student-centered sites that you visit the most.

11. Information for Parents- This is information you want parents to know that can help you to acheive educational goals. It is a great way to get parents actively involved in a partnership role.

12. Announcements/Events- This is an efficient method of communicating anything that needs to be publicized.

13. Links to State or National Curriculum- This can supply curriculum information to parents. It also helps in developing credibility as a professional. Another important benefit is that you have this information available to you at any given time.

**The Bottom Line**

Many educators develop a web site for the mere experience of creating one. However, if you take your time to develop a premier web site, it can directly and indirectly affect the quaility of your teaching. A well thought-out web site can teach your students by providing links to other pages that reinforce what they are learning in class. A web site can also be a valuable source of information by letting students know what they missed. The greatest quality of a web site is the increased communication between the teacher, students, and parents.

Designing for the web is no easy task, but if you put in the time you will soon discover that it doesn't require an engineering degree by any means.