THINGS TO PUT ON YOUR PAGE -- just a few ideas
- Information for current students
- Handouts that students will often refer to (and that they may lose): class descriptions, class schedules, information about homework assignments and special projects
- Supplementary information and exercises, including material created for from past classes that you don't plan to hand out in class or which you would like to make available to a wider audience, e.g., grammar or vocabulary exercises, recommendations for effective language study
- Links to web sites related to class topics
- Information for the university at large
- Description of current classes and class projects
- Information about your background, research, and memberships in professional organizations
- Information for other teachers
- Links to pages pages of teachers' organizations
- Calls for joint projects
- Lesson plans
- Information about job conditions in your area
- Information for the WWW community at large
- Reports on your research
- Student projects
- Information and/or links to areas of personal interest
You can find links to web pages made by English teachers (and students) at the following URLs:
Here are a few interesting examples (all are a part of the ESL Loop).
MAKING THE WEB PAGE
The absolute minimum requirements:
- A word processing program (for typing the page)
- An Internet browser (for viewing the page)
- An Internet provider (where the finished page can be stored and accessed)
- Basic information about html tags, available on-line at the sites below:
Nice additions:
- Access to a scanner for adding your own graphics and/or a collection of copyright-free graphics
- Page-making software to make the task faster. If you want to try page-making software, I strongly recommend using a program in which you directly manipulate the html code. It will help you to learn html and in the long run, it saves time and energy because you can easily correct mistakes and you can cut and paste sections of code to new pages. (I use PageSpinner shareware on my Mac, and I'll be using WZ Editor for DOS with my students this year.)
- Advanced html reference materials
Things to keep in mind:
- It's easy to convert documents made with a word processor into web pages.
- If you are making your web page with a word processor, you need to type in html tags to format the text. Then save the file as a TEXT file (ASCII) file with a name ending in .html.
- If you're using page-making software, you can cut and paste from the word-processing program to the page-making program, or you can save the word-processed document as a TEXT file and then open it up in the page making program.
- Simpler is usually better. Avoid special effects unless you have a special reason for using them.
- Use straight text rather than complicated tables or frames. Some browsers can't deal with frames, and it's hard to predict how complicated formatting will show up with different browsers
- Use a few small graphics rather than many large ones. Large graphics take a long time to load and it can be hard to get the text to fit well around them.
- Use few or no background and border graphics. A few can make your page look great, but too many can make it hard to read.
- Stay with the default settings for fonts and colors of text and background. It's hard to predict how a particular color combination will look with another browser. (However, I often break this "rule" myself by specified a white background and font size 4--as on this page--to be sure that my page will be easy to read.)
- When you've finished your page, you need to publicize it by listing it at sites for ESL teachers and your favorite search engines (Excite, Hotbot, etc.). There's a useful faq on "how to announce your web site" at http://ep.com/faq/webannounce.html
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