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| For
my project, I decided to build a Web site for our P.E. and health classes
at Edison Middle School. We have none now and I wanted to try to
build one for us. Since there are three and possibly four or more
teachers on our P.E./Health team, I wanted this project to be flexible
enough to change at almost a moments notice once the school year begins.
Before this class, I had limited experience working with computers...mainly
working with e-mail and using spreadsheets. I had absolutely no experience
with web pages or the construction of web sites. I think this is
pretty evident when you view my project. However, the experience
I've gained through this should benefit me the rest of my life.
When I started this class, as some of my peers can attest, I couldn't even copy and paste URLs or drag windows, etc. So I think I've learned probably more than the rest of the class this past month. I started with nothing and what I have now is an unfinished project that will require constant improvements and updating throughout the years to come. I wanted my project to include a sound bite on the opening page and I wanted it to be something that would immediately attract the reader's attention as soon as they opened it up. I chose a "space" midi file to embed into the index page and then I added my picture to the front page. Obviously, this was not to show off my looks, but I wanted the new sixth grade students to be able to identify me as soon as possible when they begin the new year. One of the changes I will immediately make when the year begins and I'm sure of our P.E. staff is to change the title of the page to Edison P.E. / Health instead of using just my name, and I hope to delete my large picture and place thumbnail photos with all of our P.E. teacher's names and add links to their e-mail addresses under the pictures. Right now, the only contact links are to me personally and I know that needs to be changed. The other things I thought necessary were lists of class rules and expectations and a few links to other P.E. and Health websites. Since we use Polar Heart Rate Monitors and their software in our P.E. classes, I thought I would throw in a link to the Polar site also. The other thing I wanted to add was pictures of students in some of their P.E. activities. I'm aware that I should not include names of students wit the pictures, but if I'm vague about identities, I don't anticipate any problems. I intend to get use of the digital camera for use at the first day's activities and immediately change the pictures as soon as I can. The pictures there will not last long, I just wanted to see the plan implemented as soon as I could. I also feel that kids will keep looking at the site if they think there is a possibility that they will be in one of the pictures (unidentified of course). The last thing I wanted to do was make it flexible enough that other teachers could easily add to or link their own additional pages to the site. I foresee pages added including game rules, schedules, etc., to the site. But with my very limited experience, time was the biggest issue for me to get things done. As far as mistakes and what I've learned from them...you name it, I probably did it. I made the mistake of trying to piece a web page together from not one but three different programs and the headaches involved with that could be sent to a computer foul-up museum! I've learned a great deal through this project about fine attention to details, for example the use of mixing you letters in files, etc. A lot of the problems I encountered were careless errors that a more experienced computer person would never make, but I made them and for that I'm much wiser. I think my projects from now on will be much better. My project can be found at http://students.ed.uiuc.edu/krodeffe/index.html. |
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