I had a little bit experiences of creating websites last semester. In that class we focused on the tools that we can use. I mean I did not pay that much attention to the process of planning. I thought it was just that easy to create a website as long as you know how to use one of the web designing tools. After reading this chapter, I found that knowing how use a web designing tool is far away from creating a web. The author used so many pages only tell us one thing: the importance of planning for a website. This is also what I learned from the first chapter. Then how a make a good plan for a website? The author thinks it should include three steps:
First, it is important to assess the means. Assign the situation that we are in is the first step for creating a web site. We may want to do more, but sometime we maybe limited by the circumstance or tools that we can use. This is true that with the development of technology in internet and computer areas, people have more and more tools to choose for creating a website. This is good for educators to have more choices, however, nobody can use all the tools that existed nowadays. And each tool has its own advantage and disadvantage. Thinking about which tools we are familiar or what kind of help we can get from others should be considered first. As the author also mentioned that at the end of each step we may need to think about which tool we are going to use and how much effort we can do for a the websites that we are going to create.
Second, define the objectives. In the previous step we already understand what situation we are in. That is what we have in hand. Now it is time for us to figure out what we want to put in the web site. As such what goals you want to achieve, what is the content, what is your overall pedagogy, and what is the purpose for creating this web. That is like in the first step you know what kind of truck you have and this step you need to take a look at what goods you need to upload to the truck.
Third, it is time to plan the whole website. Since we already know where to go and what we have, now we can make a plan for the website. This step includes content inventory, site architecture, and navigation strategy. Here the most important part is site architecture, I think, because it is in this step that we will sort our contents and list them into an organizational architecture that will comfortably house our materials. Here comfortably means to it is convenient and effective to all the uses. The book offers us some examples of hierarchical which are the basic of a website. In fact, a good layout and design can help users navigate easily in a website.
We are supposed to have a clear map of the whole website at the end of the first stage: planning.
The second chapter is about how to develop content. What I learned in this chaoter is about how to gather the materials on the content list that we created in the planning stage. This is different from just putting the materials together because we need to pay attention to their formats. Most parts of a course website are texts, however, if we always use a same format of text, such as color, font, size, and writing style, it must be boring to the users. So we need to try making text fancy. Using different text formats appropriately may attract users’ attention and improve the effectiveness of learning. Since this a course website and students can get online to study, we should use the online resources assist both teaching and learning. As we all know, it is hard for us to incorporate a searching engine in our website, because of the database knowledge. So if we need we can get help from some departments, such as i-Tech office. In my opinion if the website does not include that many contents an search engine in not that useful. The next part of this chapter is talking about online discussion and quiz. Discussion is always a good way to facilitate students learning. It is a good opportunity for students to find out what they need to learn through discussion. However, online discussion is not that easy to hold except the technology support because not all the students like to attend the discussion because of the typing speed or other technology problems. About the online quiz, according to the author, if we only want to deliver a quiz is not that hard, but the thing is if we want to offer feedback to users, especially immediate feedback we need to find technology support too. Multimedia used in teaching and learning is a common thing nowadays. Normally designers will incorporate some graphics, audios, and videos into a website to make it more attractive. As the author said in this part, the thing we need to be careful about the formats of medias that we want to incorporate in a website. Graphics, for example, different format have different size to a same picture. Normally, we prefer the format of .giff and .jpeg because of the size and effectiveness. There are more we need to think about the format of other format because format does not only decide the size that needed, but also impact the time that users need to download them. Streaming video can solve the problem of downloading because it can allow users to watch the videos when they are downing them. The last part of this chapter is talking about the copyright, privacy and protection. These are the things we need to always remember when we are deal with internet. Some ways of protecting our own materials online are also introduced by the author, such as insert a html language of kioskmode=true” or add a watermark to the videos. However, if someone wants to steal your products they can always find a way to do that. There is not ways that can guarantee to protect anyone’s materials.
As I said above these all important for us to create a website and we need to pay attention to all the aspects that the author mentioned in these two chapters if we want to be professional.
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