FRONT PAGE: WEBSITE DESIGNING - Year 10 CORE SKILLS work
CORE SKILLS is part of the Year 10 programme of study from 2003-4. The first term's unit is taken from the existing CLAIT+ SCHEME, the second one has been prepared by Mr. Parkinson
Core Skills involves the delivery of key ICT skills. This will be done using CLAIT / CLAIT+ units.
We will be using some units of the CLAIT + scheme while we await Microsoft certification.
Unit 5: Presentation Graphics
We will start with this topic, using the package called Powerpoint: the XP version is very powerful.
The CLAIT+ unit takes the students through the basics of the use of this package.
We will have a rotation on this course, along with other CORE SKILLS topics.
POWERPOINT can be started using the ICON on the DESKTOP or using START and PROGRAMS.
Remember that you can go to VIEW, MASTER, HANDOUT MASTER to produce handouts of Powerpoint presentations. This is what your teachers will be doing after all - get used to lots of handouts - who said that computers would produce a 'paperless office'.
Doing a search on POWERPOINT and USER GUIDE will allow you to develop ideas and skills further.
We are also looking into some Irish Electric Paper resources for some of the students.
Remember also to spend those e-learning credits, but take your time and try not to panic buy - there's some dodgy stuff out there!
See notes below. Students have a 6 week rotation on this topic.
The second group of ICT students have the opportunity to develop their own websites on their own interests. The 6 week lesson plan is shown below, and will develop over the next few months.
Here is a basic first LESSON IN WEB SITE DESIGN. - this will be adapted to form WEEK 2...
Go HERE for plenty of cool sites to help you design your site, all chosen by Mister P.
WEEK 1: RESEARCH TASK
Download a WORD version of this activity or PDF version.
WEEK 2: MAKING YOUR INDEX PAGE - FRONT PAGE BASICS
WEEK 3: HYPERLINKING
Remember the sites offering FREE BUTTONS from HERE.
Choose your hyperlink style - button, text or image ?
WEEK 4: CONTENT IS ALL.....
WEEK 5: NAVIGATION
WEEK 6: PREPARING FOR UPLOADING
Free hosts, 'free' domains from ISPs
There is a good site to work through basics of web pages HERE.
By the 3rd week or so, students should have decided what topic their website is going to be about, and have planned out the rough outline of how the site will connect together. We have also been working on the nature of the HOME PAGE: which should be called index.html - this needs to be a basic welcome to the site, to let people know that they've come to the right place, but not be too slow to load, as people are quick to wander when surfing... If you keep people waiting, they'll move on somewhere else....
1. I recommend that the students work through the rather good ACTDEN interactive activities on the site. It's presented by 2 aliens, and they take you through the basics of Front Page.
Some advice on setting up a free site from TIM HARRIS.
2. Following that, you need to head off for the site of ESTOVER COLLEGE in Plymouth. They've put together some very nice illustrated guides to the main issues that help you put together the website. These include pages on:
DESIGN A WEBSITE
HOW TO WORK WITH TEXT IN FRONT PAGE EDITOR
HOW TO WORK WITH IMAGES
HOW TO WORK WITH TABLES
HOW TO MAKE HYPER-LINKS BETWEEN PAGES
There's also a good step-by-step guide to creating simple ANIMATIONS for Web pages - these could easily be adapted by people to make a simple but effective lesson plan: a Geography-based animation.
URL for these sites may wander and change from week to week.
Remember the convention: if it's in blue and underlined, it's a link to another page....
Some FRONT PAGE TUTORIALS are available at the BEGINNERS site. They cover a range of topics:
Creating a New Web
Working with Hyperlinks
Customising Web Pages
Working with Tables
Working with Text
Front Page components
Using tables for page layout
Working with Pictures
Javascript
Another useful resource to work your way through is the BBC's WEBWISE course: an online course with 8 units on various aspects of the Internet and its use. This will teach you how to use the Internet, and along the way you can see how the Internet has developed. The 8 units are well worth working through.
For some ideas on BAD WEB DESIGN: in the opinion of the site's creators, visit WEB PAGES THAT SUCK. They mention several bad sites. try THIS ONE for an idea....
WEBDEVELOPER offers free buttons, animated gifs, banners and templates. These are the 'building blocks' which you can assemble to create your pages.
SOME BASIC PRINCIPLES
Remember also that websites should adhere to the principles of COPYRIGHT, and that you should also consider ACCESSIBILITY for all users, as well as PAGE DOWNLOAD TIMES.
Websites should be sketched out on paper before Front Page is even loaded up.... or whatever web design software is being used. (I tried using Word and it didn't really do it for me...)
WEB COUNTERS AND STATISTICS
One of the things that students want on their websites are web counters. Remember that these a) don't work very well, and b) they can be set to any number to begin with so don't mean anything - also if you are truthful and set your counter at zero and then come back a month later and it's still on zero that could be a little dispiriting...
A whole host of places offer free WEBSTATS. I've used WEBSTAT (which tells you the countries that people are visiting your site from, amongst other things...) and currently have an (invisible and therefore better button) from REINVIGORATE. This gives some good referral information, but not the Geographical detail.
FREE WEB HOSTS
Remember you'll also need some web-space. If you have an account with an ISP you'll probably have some free space reserved for you, you just need to activate it. Or put some appropriate search terms into Google or such-like.
USING TEXT
How to make sure your text can be seen and is working well:
a) Use SANS SERIF fonts (like GILL SANS, LUCIDA SANS etc...) Arial is a good choice. Remember that not all fonts are available at all times, so don't use a strange one as it may not be displayed when someone accesses your site, and TIMES NEW ROMAN will be used instead.
b) Avoid using underlining to emphasise words, as people will think these are the HYPERLINKS. Use one colour throughout the site for all hyperlinks, and try to have them highlighted in the same way, for example CLICK HERE could be a sign to the user to click on the words.
c) Be careful when using coloured backgrounds (there are only a few pages on GeographyPages which have them, mainly the index pages..) - this means that they stand out a little from the other pages - I've seen some dreadful textures which make it very difficult to see the text on the page
d) Flashing text effects and other animations may look good to begin with, but they soon become annoying...
Remember that choosing the HTML option you can see the code of the page. On a website, use VIEW and PAGE SOURCE to see the code and you can see how it was done. Don't STEAL IT though - just as bad as taking another element of a page...
IMAGE MANIPULATION
So you've got your image. Remember that you shouldn't use images that aren't yours to take. Certainly you need to consider this if you are then going into a commercial venture. Any images that are not mine are missing from the GeographyPages CD ROM.
The images could be obtained by using a digital camera, or from a free source, or scanned from earlier photos. There is obviously clip art and stuff, but we'll assume here that the image is photographic.
If you insert a picture on your web page, and then look at the bottom right hand corner of the Front Page screen you'll see the effect of this action on the LOADING TIME for your web page. If you have a fairly large photo it will add substantially to the time taken to load. One way to reduce this is to RIGHT CLICK the image and choose to AUTO THUMBNAIL the image. This will make the image smaller, and the user can then click on the image if they want, to see the full size version.
DESIGNERWIZ is a useful site at this point. What it allows you to do is to OPTIMISE your picture for the web. This means that the picture is reduced in quality to a point where it would perhaps be a problem if you wanted to print the image, but if all you are going to do is look at it on a web site the image quality is still good enough.
CLAIT +
We use the unit on PRESENTATION GRAPHICS and work through the creation of 2 POWERPOINT presentations: the first one about the people (a CV) and the 2nd one is the ASSESSMENT UNIT on a diving school.
