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April 25, 2005
Club Do's and Don'ts
Welcome back from vacation. Everyone should be working on their websites using Publisher or (if they prefer) by handwriting their HTML using Notepad. Organize your ideas and use paper to sketch out your site. All the pros sketch out their ideas before working.
A few things to remember as you work during this club:
- Don't try to have too many things open or to many things going on while you work.
- Save your work early and often.
- Remember, your sites should be saved to the Shared server (save work here > Somerville 21 Web Club > WSNS or Healy), not on the desktop Documents folder. The documents folder is overwritten every night.
- Respect your peers. Do not act up and make it impossible to for them to get their work done.
- Be careful about files you download here and at home. Image and music files can contain hidden viruses that will mess up your computer and make it impossible to use. This has already happened here in these labs and caused problems. That is one reason the systems are overwritten every night. You should not be downloading large files from the Internet while you are in the club.
- Another hint: Do NOT play banner ad games. This is one way people get viruses on their computers. It is also a waste of time. If you are going to play games, play challenging ones. Imagine how you can use your "game skills" to help you think smarter and faster.
- Use the resources at the club pages to create original art for your site. Do not just download images and put them on your pages. If you do use images from other sites, create a link back to those sites.
- Don't forget the previous web club postings here, review the site if you forget how to do something, then ask me if you are still confused.
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 01:36 PM
April 15, 2005
West Somerville Web Club: Showing Off Your Stuff!
Today we will take a few moments to show each other how our sites are coming along. By now, you should be working with Publisher.
If you are using the freewebs.com WebEditor and hosting your site there, you can still upload original art you have created, or whole pages you create in Publisher and export as HTML. Please discuss using this site with me before the end of today. You will need to bring in a short note from your parents if you wish to continue using this site in class. Bring it the next time we meet.
Special Note to Students Joining This Club Late: You should spend time reviewing the club pages and exploring some of the links and projects there. I would also like to go over some basic HTML with you, so you have a better understanding of how web pages are made.
Today:
3:00-4:00 Work on Pages
4:00-4:30 Present your sites in progress
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 02:07 PM
April 11, 2005
Healy School Web Club: Showing Off Your Stuff!
This week you will have an opportunity to show each other your websites, so far. Don't worry, this is just an opportunity to get some feedback from your classmates and me. No one is expected to be "finished." Show what you've done, your hand-coded websites, illustrations, planning maps, and/or your Publisher site in progress.
Schedule:
4:00-4:30 -- Work on your site and get ready to preview it in Explorer from the computer you are using.
4:30-5:15 -- Show your sites!
5:15-5:30 -- Feedback from Me.
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 12:28 PM
April 04, 2005
Working on your Website
By now, all of you should be working in Publisher to design and plan your website. Your site does not have to be complicated. Think of what you want to use it for. Everyone should spend all club time working on their sites. Next week you will show your site (in progress, it does not have to be finished) with the class.
Here are some ideas:
Post your poetry, lyrics or creative writing.
The web makes it easy to get "published" and share your work. The web's Non-Linear Hypertext (links) can add a new twist to a story by letting you write different endings, or allowing the reader to go through the story in different ways by clicking hotlinked words in the story. (I can show you how to do this).
Create a personal page centered around a hobby or interest
Gather resources, links and images for a hobby or interest. Why is it interesting to you? How would you make a reader of your page interested too?
Tell a story with images.
Make your own images, or collect images and then tell a story with them. You can try this with just 3 images, or many images.
Work on a group project
Work on one website project as a team. Some can be working on writing the text, or preparing the pictures, while another person is designing the site and creating the navigation. Most large web projects are produced by teams working together.
Make a links page
With your favorite links. Explain why each is important to you. Include some of the links from the club's main page. Spend some more time at those links, and add the one's you like.
Make a "proof of concept" website for a game
Before teams of game designers begin working on a new game, they sketch out storyboards of the game's action, characters, "backstory," and plotlines. You can create pages for a game you might design, using the storyboard to design the game and then posting the images and storyboards on your webpages (I will help you scan the images).
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 02:12 PM
April 03, 2005
Saving and Exporting Publisher Webpages
Publisher saves your webpages in its own format (.pub) that only it can open. When you are ready to publish your pages on the web, choose File > Save as Web Page. Save your webpages in a folder (example: "eleanor-website") next to your .pub file. Those pages can be previewed in IE and posted to a web host.
We will not post any of your pages to the web until later this spring.
Important Note about using Publisher: In Publisher, you can create Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) pages, but you cannot open and edit the HTML pages in Publisher after they are created. If you want to use Publisher to create and publish a website, save a copy of your document as a publication file (.pub). If you want to make more changes to your website, you can edit the .pub file and then re-export the HTML pages.
If you don't have Publisher at home: You can open the HTML pages that Publisher makes in another Web editor, such as Dreamweaver or the free Nvu editor. You can edit and continue to work on your HTML pages in those editors instead of Publisher, but you will not be able to open those HTML pages in Publisher anymore.
Posted by Eleanor Ramsay at 09:53 PM