Creating A Classroom Web Page

Look Around and Get Some Ideas
This is my second year teaching in the public school system, and I only started using a classroom home page in January 1997. Up until that time, I really did not have a reason for a home page, yet alone the time to dedicate to make one. When I finally decided to use one, my first thought was to just put up a page that spotlighted our class on the internet. However, that idea did not last long as my husband, who has been doing these things for years, flatly refused to support the idea if all I was going to do was to post a page that in essence just said "Hi, here we are!" The more I thought about it though, the more I came to realize that perhaps he was right. There are plenty of pages out there that do just that. They say "Hi", but that is the extent of it. Nothing of value! As a new teacher, I found that the internet has plenty of information to offer, but finding what was useful and what was not took a lot of time. The same was true when I decided to put a classroom page together. I searched the net to get an idea of what was out there. I hit schools from all over the country and, in many cases, was not impressed with what I saw; pages that just kept saying over and over again, "Hi, here we are!" Search the net and you will see the same. "Hi, we are the <select a grade> class at <select a school name> school, see what we've done." or "Come see <select a teachers name> class!" So what! What were these pages trying to say, or better yet, what did they have to offer? Usually you hit them once, or maybe twice, to give them benefit of the doubt that perhaps they had only recently joined the internet and were just getting started. But after that, you usually end up just forgetting them. The first page that really impressed me was the Teel Family Home School Page in Alaska. Maybe I'm being partial because we lived there for three years, but here was a page that offered something, useful information!

However, I did not want, nor do I want to become a huge site dedicated to one class room in Stafford, Virginia. Although if my husband could have his way, we would! No, what I wanted was just a simple page that we (I firmly believe in collaboration), could put together that allowed me an opportunity to keep the parents informed of what we were doing. I really didn't have a good idea of what I wanted, but I was interested in topics such as what was going on in the upcoming week, homework that I knew the students would be doing, and maybe a couple of pages to show the parents what their children were doing in class. So I told my husband do just that ... create a simple page. He constructed a basic home page and created links to other pages that logically branched out into topics of their own. The worst thing that you could do is to have ALL of your information on one page. I have seen pages like this and they seem to take forever to load. He even created individual graphics to "personalize" each page. Less than two weeks later, he had to redesign our class page, since I was starting to add more information, activities, links to other sites that I collected, and other things that I had not initially envisioned. With individual graphics for each page, special background graphics, and other "niceties," this was starting to take some time to support.

Define a Template for Your Class Pages
What prevented this from being a disaster, was the fact that he at least had an idea where this could have gone, and therefore, created the pages from the beginning with the intent of them being expandable. One of my primary concerns from the beginning was the issue of time. I do not have a lot of free time to dedicate to the support of this effort, so whatever was created had to be supported with minimal expenditure of time on my part. After the redesign, we came up with a template on how each page was to look:
A page logo that was standard on all pages
A standard background and color scheme
Basic navigation control features that include:
  • Table of Contents that shows the logical flow of how pages "branch" from the main page (site map)
  • Buttons for going backward and forward
  • A button to take the viewer immediately to our classroom home page
  • A HREF="../sitemap.htm"> Alphabetical Index showing everything that our class page has to offer.

Since all our pages point to the same page logo and background image, we can instantly change all of our pages to reflect seasons, holidays, or other "color coordinated" schemes by copying the new image to the default image used on the page. That literally takes a couple of seconds and presto - a whole new look! Using templates also has one big advantage, all of your pages have a consistent look and feel to them that gives them that polished look. Pick up a book and open it. Do you see page one printed on blue paper, page two on black, page three on halographic, and so on? Think of your class pages as an electronic publication, which really, they are. Using presentations that vary wildly from page to page is not bad as long as your concept of what you want to publish supports that scheme. But try to remember that classroom web pages are primarily for your parents and students. So what are these schemes saying about you and your class?

Since we are using templates to build our pages, adding new pages for anything is almost as simple as making a copy of an existing page, going into the page with a text editor (or word processor as long as you save the file as an ASCII text file), changing the title between the <Title> and </Title> tags, and replacing the "body" of the existing page with your new information. In fact we have a generic template just for that purpose. I say almost since some pages require creating new templates if the such as those used in our Our Dream for Our Country. But if you look at the code that the pages use, you will find that, with the exception of the filenames for images and the addition of some new buttons for paging within the book, the code is the same! Updating three homework pages and the week in preview page does not take much time at all. I edit the HTML pages on our computer and just FTP (File Transfer Program) the files to our local internet service provider. Supporting our web page takes an average of 15-20 minutes at the most per week (unless we are adding something new). I think I can afford that amount of time.

Learning versus Using HTML
So you still want to create a classroom web page, right? Actually, creating a web page is not a difficult task, even for a newcomer. Netscape Communicator contains since several authoring tools are available (most freely on the internet) for those who are not familiar with the HTML language used by web browsers. The HyperText Markup Language or HTML, is actually a subset of a much richer dialect called the Standardized General Markup Language, or SGML. These languages use tags or markups (the <statements>) such as <B>for bolding text</B> or <I>for italicizing text</I> to transform a plain text file into a marked up document suitable for publishing on the internet. The language is not difficult to learn, and actually requires only a minimal set of tags for you to use to create a web page. There are several books available on HTML and even on-line tutorials such as Writing HTML or A Beginners Guide to HTML that can get you started or assist with some questions or ideas that you might have. The fact is that HTML is almost not even required since browsers today are intelligent enough to display the contents of a file according to the type of filename extension that is on your document. Filename extensions are those dot-label suffixes such as (.txt) for text files, (.htm. or .html) for HTML, and (.jpg or .gif) for image files that, at a glance tells the user what type of file they have. However, you do not want to link a plain text document as a web page without using at least the <PRE> </PRE> tags around your text, since it would not present itself well aesthetically in a browser. There are advantages and disadvantages for using authoring tools versus doing it yourself. The main reason for using web authoring tools is that they allow you to create pages fast and accurately. These tools compensate for the designer's lack of knowledge and experience with the underlying code. If you know the code, it is just as fast, if not faster, to go in and make a tweak to a page and voila - a new page! However, this approach is not for everyone. It is not realistic to assume that all teachers are skilled or proficient in the analysis, design, development, and maintenance of computer software. When you start to construct a series of interlinked web pages, you are in essence writing or creating a program; a program written in HTML which makes function calls to linked pages. Use the tools with which you feel the most comfortable. It is not difficult, and after a while you will master the basics and move to a higher level of proficiency, but it takes time to learn some of the nuances of the language.

Before Getting Started, Think About What You Want
Before you charge off and start building a web page, stop for a moment and honestly ask yourself why you really want to create a web page in the first place. I do not want to discourage anyone from creating a web page. Far from it! In fact I highly encourage it, especially for teachers doing this as a home page for their class room. But answering this question now will actually save you a lot of time later (not to mention headaches) should you decide to change your rationale. As most teachers know, time is a valuable commodity that you cannot afford to waste! Think for a moment about what you want and where you think you might want to take this in the future. Consider this, if you will, as your strategic business plan for your web page.

Of course one of the more obvious answers might be simply because everyone else has one, or perhaps your school has just published a web page and your name is linked as a faculty member, or your class room is listed on a particular grade level page. You might feel compelled at this point to publish or perish, lest you be labeled an infidel who does not believe in supporting twentieth century technology! Whatever the reason, understanding why you want a web page actually sets the stage for what you create and how far you can take it later on. It is almost like building a house: lay the foundation, frame the walls, and add a roof. What you don't want to happen is to finish the house and find that you forgot to add plumbing, wiring, and other key essentials to your abode. Building a web page is actually very similar: create the entry point (home page), add some text, throw in some graphics, add links to the outside world, and before you know it you have a small site on your hands. The only problem is that if you did not consider the potential for growth (and believe me these things can grow) you could very well end up having an albatross on your hands that you can not get under control.

However, not everyone has a home page even though quite a few people do in fact have them, including businesses, organizations, government offices, and private citizens. You name the category, and there is a web page somewhere out there for it. Access any one of the major search engines, such as Yahoo or Lycos, and enter a term or word that interests you. Press the search button, sit back, and watch the results. Depending on the word that you entered, you could literally end up having thousands of hits. Thankfully the search engine front ends do not display all the results, but limit the displays to only a few pages. Provide multiple words in the same search and the results could easily become hundreds of thousands, or even millions of hits. Each of these hits represents a single web page that contains some part of the information that you specified as search criteria. I think you can easily grasp the concept of information overflow: of all the links possible, which ones do you look at? What is more important, however, is to which of these links will you make subsequent visits?

A web page is a digital ambassador; an electronic representative of you and your class in the cybercommunity we call the Internet. Access to this community is available to almost anyone from either a home computer or a soon-to-be Web TV interface; a box that sits next to your television set and links you to the internet through your cable TV service provider. Consider the fact that even though not everyone has a computer, almost everyone as a least one television. There are many people are on the net looking for information on topics such as art, literature, science projects, sports, and school home pages just to name a few. To the first time page master, this is often a compelling reason; to say that they have a page or a presence on the internet. Though this is an answer, is it a really good answer, and what does that page say about you? The same is true about creating a web page for your classroom. What does that page say about your class.

How many times do you think web surfers hit a page and exit before it finishes loading simply because it takes far too much time. I have seen sites, as you probably have also, that were either graphic intensive, had to many graphics (especially animated graphics), or had huge images embedded in the page that took a long time to load. I have seen several in my experiences that took over ten minutes to load and the big disappointment came after they finished and I found that it was not even worth looking at in the first place! That is wasted time; yours for spending the time to create the page, and mine waiting for it to load. Graphics are great, but use them wisely. Remember that even though you might have the latest and greatest computer on the market, your end user may be using an old clunker. This is especially true if you consider the economic diversity that you will find in your class room. Some kids may have access to top-of-the-line systems, but the greater number may have older equipment. It may not be the best, however, it is probably paid for and what is more important is that it works. When you think about that page you are going to create, think about the lowest common denominator. I certainly am not advocating the suppression of technological advancement, but just remember why you are building this home page in the first place.

If you want users to keep making repeat visits to your site, then get the initial welcoming page up in a reasonable amount of time! After all, we do want them to come back, don't we? Certainly we want visitors to return to our page! We want our parents to see our class pages so they can see what their children are doing in our classrooms. We want the kids to see themselves represented and give them a feeling of pride and accomplishment. We want fellow educators to see our pages, and not because we are on an ego trip that says "I have one why don't you?" or even, "I have one and its better than yours!" No, we want fellow educators to see our pages and get ideas. Education is the exchange of expression and ideas. Learn from someone. Nobody has a lock on ideas. If you see something on a page that you like, and it can work for you, use it! Keep coming back to see what we have done, because we are doing the same, we are looking at you to see what you have done that can work for our class. While you are at it, if you hit a page and see something that you like, or even dislike, let that person know. Give them the opportunity to improve their work. We all can learn something from someone!

Provide Useful Information
A major problem in getting people to make repeated visits to your site occurs when you do not update your page and allow it to become stagnant. Users will rapidly drop your site off their lists when they know that the information they contain is old, which is why again you are asked - why are you creating this page in the first place? If the page is just to say "Hi, here we are!" then why waste your time doing it? It will be seen once and soon forgotten. If you don't believe me, just put a web counter on the page and see how many hits it gets. I assure you that sites that are alive, relevant, and provide timely information to the viewer get hit often, while those that are dead are buried and forgotten.

Don't create pages just for the sake of creating them. Create pages that provides the user with something that they need; information. As a teacher, our classroom pages should say something about our class. Our users or target audience should primarily be the student and their parents. After all, who are we teaching, and who are we creating these pages for? We have received numerous comments from parents about our pages because we are providing them with timely, valuable, and relevant information. What kind of information is valuable to a parent? For starters, how about what you are planning to do during the week. As educators, are we not accountable for what goes on in our classroom? Do you know of a better way to publicly demonstrate your accountability than by making that information readily available to the community?

You might say, "why publish on the internet when you can just as easily send that information home on a note?" That is a fair question., but then ask yourself how many notes, disciplinary slips, and report cards have failed to get home because someone lost it, a dog ate it, or a big green alien snatched it from the hands of one of your students! Granted, this would be ideal if everyone had access to the internet, but unfortunately they do not. You still have to pass information to parents in written form. But for those who do have access to the internet, it is a life saver. Is it extra effort to support both form of media? Absolutely not! You still had to type the information anyway; just take it one step further and add some HTML tags around it, and it becomes a web page.

Another area we have found success with parents in, is the very sensitive area (at least for students), of homework. "Sorry mom - the teacher didn't give us any this week", or "Spelling words? Gee, I lost my list and the test is tomorrow", or "Project? What project? We don't have a project!" Put a homework hotline on your class room home page! Not only is this information useful, it changes weekly and that alone provides change to your pages. I have had several parents tell me that they needed a copy of the spelling words for the week because their child had lost it. No problem; hit the classroom home page and print them off. "Oh Johnny ... look what we found on the computer for you!"

Do you reward your students with recognition? We do in our class room with our Student of the Week. Not only acknowledge the student in front of their peers, but take your web page one step further by publishing weekly who the Student of the Week was for all the world to see! How about projects that the students do, writings, artwork; anything to show that they (and you), are doing something! You do not have to post everything, nor would I recommend it, but it is great to publish key works that the students have accomplished or activities that you have completed in class. It gives them a great feeling when they know that the world can see their work and they can take credit for it. A good point here is to be fair about what you publish. They are your students; all of them. Do not just post material from the same kids week after week. We are a public school and are not here for a selected group of students. Show work from all of your students! This is also creates branches from your home page by showing some of your better past activities as well as some of the current projects you are doing. Again, publishing activities also prevents stagnation of your pages and shows the parents that you are doing something in the class. Besides, as responsible educators, we are in the learning mode and are looking for great ideas to mix the curriculum up and make the class and learning exciting. What is better than to give our peers a glimpse of what we are doing? I could use some good ideas too!

Since we are essentially reporting on what children are doing when we publish on the web, we need to stress the importance of privacy. Privacy is first and foremost on my mind when we post something on our pages. At the beginning of the year, I asked the parents what their feelings were about publishing the names and photographs of their children on the internet. Because you never know who is cruising the net, many parents responded negatively to the idea, and to be honest, I do not blame them. So what do you do? Well that's easy; let each student pick a pseudonyms or a nom-de-plume and use that! Not only does this mask the actual identity of who the student is, but it also is a great opening for a literature lesson! While we are at it, post no photographs without the written permission of the parent. As a general rule, I do not use photographs of the students at all, PERIOD. If I cannot do it for all, I will not do it for one.

Now that your home page is starting to flourish, how about adding some things for your students to do. Design your page with the idea of having your students learn to feel comfortable using a computer to access their home page on the internet. To do this ,you need to give them something which provides interaction. Links to educational sites, and sites dedicated specifically for kids, gives them the ability to branch out and explore this electronic learning environment. Some may say "why provide links on your page when you can just as easily access Yahoo, or other search engines and use those sites?" This is true, however, you never know what you may find, since not all of those links are rated and certified as child safe. Providing a list of sites that you have personally checked offers a reasonably safe activity for your students. Since you cannot control what goes on at the other side of the line, links should not be considered fool-proof and caution should be urged. This is a great activity for both parent and child; exploring the net together. Just make sure that you let the child do the driving! If you have someone in your class (or in the house) that has programming skills and abilities, ask them if they could put together something for your class. You would be surprised! Not just games, there are plenty of those around, but interactive activities that supplement and reinforce the teaching that you do in the class. These kinds of things really start to integrate technology that we all talk about with teaching. Use technology for more than just playing games or drawing pictures.


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