Web-page creating activities

The process of creating webpage is similar in many ways to a multimedia presentation, with hyperlinks instead of slide transitions. When teaching literacy, teachers can quite easily expand the literacy skills alongside the development of ICT capability for students. The process of producing a webpage is extremely valuable in today’s society. As mentioned earlier, it helps to develop digital fluency with students at the same time.

The benefits for teachers is that it acts as a powerful multimodal program that combines text, images, video and audio in a non-linear sequence.

It will be important that you ensure that you protect students’ privacy and observe copyright rules. Be certain that students don’t incorporate copyright material such as downloaded pictures into their projects and post them on the Internet.

What software to use?

Websites at times can be intimidating, however, there are a number of web-based templates available you can use that will help you to get started quite easily.

If you want to push your students beyond their current levels of digital fluency then one of the best ways to start is create a web page using MS Word! Simply just get them to create a normal word processing document and then ask them to Save As a HTML file. How easy is that?

FrontPage is also another program which is easy for students to use and the best the part is that because it comes from Microsoft, many skills are transferable. For this reason, it has become a commonly used tool in primary classrooms

Dreamweaver is another software and perhaps the most professional of the options. For this reason, it can be quite intimidating for the novice user. The language and formatting is new and specific to the program itself. However, once you have used it a couple of times you should be able to find it easier.

Why should you teach this?

• The production of a web-page is demonstration of high digital fluency; • It addresses ACELA1790 about identifying online text that enhance navigation; • Takes students beyond their current level of ICT capability; • It addresses the ‘multimodal’ element of the national curriculum; • It builds on their word processing skills and therefore compliments their literacy learning.

The following project comes from the book Learning ICT in English by Bennett (2006, p.115-126).

Why should you teach this?

• It helps students identify features of online texts that enhance navigation (ACELA1790); • Students will create multimodal texts that combine elements such as video, audio and images (ACELT1791); • Students will plan and deliver a multimodal presentation that contains a sequence of ideas and information (ACELY1677); • The students will gain familiarity with HTML coding, programming and hosting and; • Helps students to become technological innovators.

In this project, the students will: • Gather information about authors and poets; • Evaluate the design of web pages; • Design and produce their own web page; • Present information about authors and poets; • Combine and link their web pages to produce a website; • Evaluate the effectiveness of their website in comparison to others.

Teacher knowledge

• How to search the Internet; • How to create and export bookmarks; • How to design and create web pages; • How to create a website with hyperlinked pages.

Challenging more able students

• Create the hyperlinks between pages; • Design and create the home page for a website; • Create a series of links portraying different sorts of information about a particular author or poet.

Supporting the less able students

• Provide a template document or writing frame for the web page; • Provide a set of bookmark links to websites which have been checked for content; • Provide more support. •

What will the students learn?

• How to search for, access and extract information from books, the Internet; • Background information about authors and poets; • How to replicate the style of a particular author or poet; • How to present information to a particular audience; • How to evaluate the effectiveness of a web page and a website; • How to design and create a web page; • How to hyperlink web pages.

Resources

• Access to the Internet; • A web browser; • A bookmark list of websites and web pages for evaluation; • A program for creating web pages.

Activity 1: Gather information

Have a whole class discussion about an author or poet with whom the students are familiar, focusing on information about personal knowledge and the writer’s work. Ask the students to list other poets or writers with whom they are familiar. Then discuss how they might find more information about these writers.

Ask the students to compile a list of questions or headings which will from the focus for their enquiries. Some example of headings might include:

• Full name; • Picture(s); • Life story; • Likes/dislikes; • First book/poem; • Overview of work and styles of writing; • Your favourite book/story/poem.

Don’t forget to remind the students about how to search for information using books and Internet.

Activity 2: Website evaluation

Remind the students about the websites mentioned in the previous activity which they had identified as being particularly useful. Students are to identify the features which they thought make it a ‘good’ web page’ such as content, presentation, design, navigability and audience. They will need to identify also the evaluation criteria they will use to score the websites they bookmarked and other which you have identified.

Activity 3: Design and produce web pages presenting information about authors and poets

This activity may take several lessons to complete. Remind them of the websites they have found to be effective and to include the same or similar features in their own. The students will work in pairs to create a web page of information.

Activity 4: Combine and link their web pages to produce a website

The organisation of this activity will depend on the availability of computers and the skills and confidence of the students. At some point all the student’s completed web pages, together with accompanying images, will have to be transferred to one ‘master’ computer.

Activity 5: Evaluate the effectiveness of their website in comparison with others

Remind the students that criteria they used to evaluate websites in Activity 2 and then explain this activity. They will need to work in pairs to evaluate their author website. They could be instructed to evaluate at least two other pages and their own page, scoring them on a four-point scale against each criterion.

Ideas for using Web Design in the Classroom

Here are some other ideas for using web design and creation in the classroom: • Class web pages; • Web pages for a particular issues being covered in class; • Individual web pages as an ePortfolio; • Web pages designed partly by the teacher for a particular unit of work; • Historical websites; • Celebratory websites - events, people in the class, local community.