Educ 463 - Websites by Teachers

Integrating a website for a class is an excellent to keep all the students informed and involved. Assignments and notes can be put on online for those students who are sick or go on field trips. Paper can be saved as the students are responsible for printing or reading the information online. Blogs and postings can be added and have students respond and engage in discussion. But for such things to be possible a site must be made. There is the usual google sites, but if a teacher puts in a little effort, they can create a cool custom built site that does almost everything they need.

First there is html itself. There are various sites to teach html and its various tags. This is the old and antiquated way of learning html. These days we can create web pages in office or in various programs such as nvu or the various online html editors.

This is the first step. Next is to jazz up that site. There are many free sites out there that makes buttons such as cooltext and buttongenerator. There are also logo makers and banner makers out there as well. Finally there is pics4learning which gives free, un-copyrighted, pictures that you can use on your website. With these tools a website can really take form.

Once you have passed this level, you can get advanced and learn css using the various tutorials. As I have done a site using templated html files as my basis site, it is definitely not fun trying to edit each and every page to make some update. CSS nicely gets around this by creating a common layout that can be altered using a config-style file. Very handy when the pages get out of hand. Secondly there is php - tutorial to really make websites come alive. This is for expert users as it requires much time and dedication to learn. Then there is Web 2.0 to worry about. Needless to say, starting with the building blocks can really leads us down some extravagent paths.

As educators, we should be able to use such simple tools to really create and customize the internet. If we can mold it into something useful and our own, the students can really benefit; assuming of course we properly integrate it into our classes.