For
the first project, I simply want students to construct a page (or
a few, if they desire) that they feel represents them. On this page,
they may include biographical information such as their likes, dislikes,
hobbies, favorite places, and favorite people. I advise students to
be conscious of HTML design, stressing that they should not uncritically
put elements on their page. In my first semester teaching HTML, not
giving students any instruction on how to design their webspaces was
the cause of one of the dissatisfactions I experienced. It was not
long before someone advised me to use Robin Williams' The Non-designer's
Design Book to teach design principles. In the text, she explains
four basic principles: Proximity, Alignment, Repetition, and Contrast.
Proximity refers to the grouping of items close together. The principle
of alignment states that nothing should be placed on the page arbitrarily.
Repeating visual elements throughout the space is important. Last,
contrasting refers to avoiding elements on the page that are merely
similar. We then examine my colleague Brendan
Riley's web space as an example of a well designed space
that employs the four design principles described in Williams' book.
When I first began teaching
HTML, I taught raw code. So, in order to facilitate their development
in understanding and using HTML, I required them to use one of the
Tips and Tricks on the
NWE Help pages, which includes page refresh, fading text,
bordered boxes, non-underlined links, dragging text, and rollovers.
I have since begun teaching an editor--asWe HTML editor. This
program is a relatively simple code-based editor that provides help
with tags and other HTML conventions.
Last,
I require them to link their pages within their directories (from
this project henceforth) with simply the name of the page, not the
complete URL. For instance, the command should be <a href="projecttwo.html">,
NOT <a href="http://web.nwe.ufl.edu/~hthomas/projecttwo.html">.
Encouraging them to be cognizant of hyperlinking and destination serves
a number of purposes: 1) it emphasizes interconnectivity, destination,
and a certain accountability: students become active agents in their
will to make connections in a fluid, dynamic space; and 2) it makes
the task of archiving student work a bit easier for the instructor,
as well as the student who wishes to save his or her work to alternative
directories at the end of the semester.
Primarily, the first project
is designed to orient the students to use HTML and allow them to articulate
their identities as they understand them.