Simple website pages for YOUR media center

[William and Deena Wells <wcwells@IX.NETCOM.COM>]

Several months ago I posted the following to the list and received some
responses.  I think that more may be interested, especially if you've had a
chance to catch your breath.


Dear colleagues,

I'm looking for partners in web site development, a collaborative effort
over the summer.  I have nearly 5000 links and a website organizing them,
collected over probably three to four years.  I want to annotate them and
check them over for content again, since it's been so long since I've
visited some of the sites.  I know all the links I have are valid (Front
Page 98 checks them for me).  But the idea of writing even a sentence or two
for each site is daunting.  I thought about letting students adopt certain
pages but I would rather have the professional expertise of people used to
selection and weeding, folks like you.

History:
The links are semi-organized by subject area.  I spend several hours every
evening fiddling with them and it's been worth it.  All of our classrooms
have been connected to the internet and all teachers have a machine at their
desk, but our inservice has been practically nonexistent for some faculty
and they're nervous about surfing or using search engines.  Remembering how
overwhelmed I was when I first got online, I decided to create pages for all
subject areas and I'm getting close.  Just this week I worked with a science
teacher who was complaining about kids spending so much time looking for
information and we created our own webpages for alternative energy.  The
kids loved it, she loves it, and I have a new set of links.

Most of my links are high school level, but there are elementary links since
I'm K-12 certified and may not always work in a high school.

Process:
I envision something like this:
You decide which pages you want to work on.  If you taught history before
getting your media certification you'll probably want to adopt the history
pages. I send you, preferably via e-mail attachment, the html source for the
page(s) you decide to adopt.  You check the page links, write an annotative
summary of highlights or contents, and e-mail it back.  I repost the page,
and send you the entire site stuff when everyone is finished.
You can then post the entire thing to your website, editing the default
homepage to reflect your schoolname and you as a contact.

I've set up a little mailing listserv for those involved in the project (or
even our own development webpage not linked to the content pages) and if you
run in to HTMl questions you'll have friends to ask.

The tools:
You'll need Front Page Express or Front Page Editor (the editor in Front
Page 98).  I recommend Front Page Express, which came bundled in with my
Windows 95 software.  I used it for awhile, but upgraded to Front Page 98 as
my site management tool and Front Page Editor (part of the package) for
editing the individual pages (around $80 academic version with full
documentation).  If you buy Front Page 98 you get in to setting up personal
webservers on your hard drive and it was awful until I finally figured it
out.  I don't want pages edited with other web editors, as they change
formats and header information.  I have a unified stylesheet I'm finishing
up and to try to use other stylesheets would complicate this project.

You'll probably need an HTML manual.  While it's not absolutely essential
that you know HTML it helps to know how links work.
You will also need a space to host your website and the knowledge of how to
do it or at least transfer files to it(check with your tech coordinator or
webmaster).  It needs to be fairly large (there are over 200 pages and
subpages on my site) and I'm not sure if it would fit within the meg or so
commercial ISPs allow for homepages.  My school has a server and I FTP my
updated files to it daily.

The benefits:
You'll have your own library media web pages for your school.
You'll have experience in adding links and can customize web pages for
classes throughout the year like I did with the alternative energy pages.

You'll look like you devoted your entire summer to "professional
development" while providing a great service to your school.

You can learn web design practices and a bit of html programming language
without a lot of effort.

The pages can be kept updated simply by my sending out a monthly e-mail with
attachments that you can download to your webserver.

Once you edit the default.htm homepage, no one will ever know that anyone
else was involved and you'll look like a hero, or you can give credit to
everyone else involved and look like a role model for collaboration and
cooperative learning.  It doesn't matter to me!  I like the idea of modeling
cooperative learning and would want to give credit off my default.htm
homepage to anyone participating who will let me use their name.
Take a look at my website and see if this is something that appeals to you.
I'm in the process of restructuring a lot of the pages to use just a generic
footer (back to homepage link) so your pages wouldn't have my school name on
them.

http://www.tcs.k12.oh.us/webspace/dwells/default.htm

The pages are listed on
http://www.tcs.k12.oh.us/webspace/dwells/webpals.htm

If you locate a page you want to adopt make sure it hasn't already been
adopted and send e-mail to me.  I'll add your name to the list and send out
the HTM file to you.

I can be reached at 513-524-BOOK after 4:00 pm EST this week if you have
logistics questions.

Deena Wells
K-12 Media Specialist
Talawanda City Schools
Oxford, OH
wcwells@ix.netcom.com

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