Why I Love Building Websites
Judih Weinstein Haggai
I've been building websites since 1999 to create an online environment for students, friends, writers and teachers. First of all, they provide students with a reason to click into the net and explore relevant English.
The first site I built was for a grade 7 class using Homestead, a new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) system for creating a pretty page without knowing HTML. I had enrolled in a course with Arieh Sherris (yeah!) and adored the doors opened by his beloved Homestead.com.
I asked the students for permission to photograph them, and we posted assignments and essays and in general kept it in line with what we were doing in class. They were proud!
The year after that, I built an online How to Make your own Website course, also using Homestead and providing guidance and lots of live links to give help with simple HTML, sources for online dictionaries and graphics and examples of different sorts of pages.
When the students built their own pages, I included a page with all of their links. It was divine! Then one day, Homestead ceased to offer gloriously limitless free sites. I had to delete my site and the kids lost their hard work. But two different classes of students had benefited from that fine site and I know with the popularity of Flash and other web tools, a new group of students were on their way to appreciate website design.
After that, I went over to Geocities.com, another free site and another simple non-HTML platform.
I built my own private sites (including a general site of poetry, ADHD work from my thesis, artwork, and other fine things including MLK and Bob Dylan).
(http://www.geocities.com/privaj_2000/index.html)
I built a Poetry communal site called the Swiss Poet Account Collection (http://www.geocities.com/privaj/swisspoet.html)
And I built a site for a wonderful photographer, Graham Seidman, (http://www.geocities.com/privaj/Graham.html).
I've built an online site for our English Learning Centre's Theme Political Assassinations/ Making a Difference (http://www.geocities.com/privaj_2000/political.html)
I've built sites for my current classes:
Grade 11: http://www.geocities.com/privaj_2001/11.html
Grade 12: http://www.geocities.com/privaj_2001/12.html
And for my grade 9 class, there is a site, but they want to keep it private!
What do the kids think of these sites?
This year's winner is definitely the Grade 11 site, because I'm constantly reminding them that they can find the Book Report instruction page there as well as monthly or weekly reminders of what we're going to be doing. They, as 4 pointers, are comfortable with the Net and like knowing that there's an option for when they lose their workpages.
I also mail them reminders with the site URL attached. I believe in forcing the issue!
The Grade 12 students look at the site when I tell them I've uploaded their photos.
The Grade 9 students will announce their site when they're ready. It's their site and their right!
How much time do I spend on updating?
Once upon a time, when Homestead was still flying, I was much more involved in online updating. I was highly enthusiastic. I loved the net and loved the adventure of seeing my designs upload the way I envisioned them. I used trivia contests, and song contests. I gave prizes for the first people to e-mail me with the correct answers. I was active and many of my students liked the interaction.
Now, I tend to update once or twice a month but e-mail my students weekly.
My most recently created site uses a Blog format (specifically geared to ADHD subjects (http://judih.wordpress.com).
A blog is highly accessible and great for simple word documents. For multimedia, I think that Adele Raemer has landed nicely in wikispaces, and I do have one. Perhaps that will be my next frontier.
Comments?
Comments are always welcome. Click in and take a look. As one happily addicted to the net for fast alternate forms of communication, I'm always happy to receive e-mails.
Judih Weinstein Haggai
Ma'ale Habsor Comprehensive School
judih@hotmail.com