One of the things I am most interested in learning about in this class is how to design a web page. I think of myself as a crafty and creative person. I have several scrapbooks and photo albums that have been embellished. Once I was introduced to Shutterfly, I began making/designing my own photo books to look similar to the scrapbooks I had always done that took soooooo much time. All of that being said, when we were told that we had to have a class blog at school, I told my friend, who was helping in the design and implementation, that I was excited to do it, but it had to be cute. I needed to envision it as a continuous scrapbook page. I was intrigued by the process as my friend had me find a graphic I wanted to use as the background and then she used the html code to put it on my page. I wanted to be involved in the overall appearance with font, color scheme, and usability. The way she worked to put together my title, tabs, headers, etc. was way beyond my reach - but I wanted to know more so I could design myself, just like making a scrapbook page.
Having the opportunity now to learn how to do this myself is pretty empowering. Seriously! You see, my friend is "in charge" of the master site that holds all the blogs of our school. She is one of only three people that can go in and make changes to the class blogs. She is a teacher leader in technology. Now I have no desire to go into this site and make changes to anyone's page, but the fact that I COULD if I wanted because of having the understanding of how it all works would be empowering.
Knowing how all the codes work and having the ability to help other teachers at school, just like my friend did, is what I want. I'm extremely excited to learn, but I'm concerned that all those codes and symbols are going to be terribly overwhelming. Looks like I'll know more very soon.
I understand your concern over feeling overwhelmed about codes. I feel the same way. However, this blog looks pretty amazing. I don't know whether you didn't anything special or not. Usually, I encourage my teachers to just get their content, curriculum and communication down on their website and we will worry about "fluffing" up the page later. If I could know more about codes, I would feel like I could really help my teachers, like the leader at your school. I don't think you are going to have any trouble with codes though.
ReplyDeleteI really like your blog page. It is amazing what you did with it. It really makes you want to read it and catches your attention. This is one area i would love to help the other teachers out in at my school also. Right now we have webpages but we are not blogging at this time. I can see how it would help connect us more to the community around us and our families. I can't wait to learn how to get more into codes either.
ReplyDeleteI liked the analogy you made to scrap-booking (something I would like to do but can't seem to find the time). Just choosing a background can impact how people view your page. I don't consider my self extremely artistic but do have an appreciation for art and would like to learn how to digitally create something i could never do with pens or paint. I too am a little concerned about feeling overwhelmed by codes but know I have to learn them (and so I will). I asked my principal if I could be one of the webmasters of our school web-page in part because of this class and he said yes (Yikes!)So I hope that learning about design will allow me to update our page to make it both more inviting and functional.
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