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Web Page Mania

Mon, 09/10/2007 - 22:16 — ehoman

I was looking for something fun to do today in my computer class since their ad projects are due tomorrow and they're all FREAKING OUT. Since a lot of my students said they had never created a web page and would like to learn how to do so, I decided to do a crash course in web development. This was only partially motivated by the fact that it's a HUGE hobby of mine and, as we all know, a little bit of us always comes out in our teaching. I also think it's a great "mode" of writing and that in today's web-based society, a little bit of Internet ownership is always kind of thrilling (as well as being an important thing to learn and understand).

So, after a quiz and a short discussion, I took them through basic web site design and showed them how to create a page and insert images, background colors, text, hyperlinks, etc. THEY LOVED IT!!! I honestly wasn't expecting the reaction I got, and neither were they; one student said "wow, I'm actually pretty entertained by this... didn't think I would be!" Multiple of them said they wished they could have learned this before the ad projects were due so they could have done this as one of their media. I was thrilled with their excitement as, like I said, it's a passion of mine as well.

I don't know if we're allowed to share student work, but I wanted to, so here goes: here's the link to a homepage one of the girls did during class today. They only had about 10 minutes to poke around FrontPage, so she obviously didn't get much done, but this girl in particular was pretty excited about it, so I thought I'd share hers: http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~sjoy/

...I think following will need to be a discussion about how pictures/images can help or hinder design Smiling

What I loved about her passion was that she told me she plans on incorporating her "Latina" self into her page as she works on it (which she says she plans on doing later). My wishy-washy teacher self was thrilled that she was able to find a new and exciting form of self-expression; it's always an ultimate goal of mine as an English teacher.