Agricultural and Extension Education
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AEE 526 - Information Technologies in Agricultural and Extension Education |
Module 4:  |
Designing and Creating Web Sites and
Searching for and Evaluation Web Information (2.5
units) |
Introduction: |
I was at Ohio State
recently speaking to their senior capstone class on the future of
agricultural and extension education. The instructor started the
class by asking the students to identify one major change that had seen
in their life time. Their answers ranged from genetically modified
crops to cell phones. I was thinking of how I would answer the question and my response would have been the World Wide Web. The World Wide Web has had a profound effect on nearly every aspect of our lives ranging from education to banking to finding information to planning travel. None of the students at Ohio State mentioned the World Wide Web because they grew up with up. The World Wide Web has made a profound effect on all aspects of our life. At one time, only Computer Geeks could create web pages. That is because the earliest web pages had to be created using a programming language known as Hyper Text Markup Language (HTML). And the Computer Geeks wanted you to think it was an arduous task that required a high level of mental capacity. The early classes and workshops on Web Page Design were painful because you have to learn HTML. And if you didn't do it everyday, it was hard to learn. Fortunately times have changed and anybody can design and mount a web page today. We no longer have to make web pages from scratch. There are software programs such as DreamWeaver that make it easy to create web pages. But just because one can create a web page, doesn't necessarily mean the information is correct or the page is well designed. In this module, we have several learning objectives. However, the overall goal of the module is to enable you to create GOOD web pages. Now on with the show.
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Learning
Objectives:  |
 Describe the steps
necessary in creating a web page. Discuss
five principles of good web page design. Use a web site
creation software program. Demonstrate skill in
creating a web site. When presented with
four web sites, be able to correctly rank the sites in order of
quality. Discuss how to
determine the accuracy of information on the web. Identify trustworthy
web sites. Conduct more
efficient searches on the web. Describe
the differences among domain names. Describe how to
register a web site name. Discuss how to select
a web site hosting service. |
| Instructional Activities:  |
Section
1 - Web Page Creation and Design Dreamweaver is
considered to be the Cadillac of web page design software. However, the
program costs more than $600. Because of that we will be using a free,
but adequate, web editor called SeaMonkey (this web page was created
using SeaMonkey). It can adequately do about 99% of everything that I
need to do in teaching this class. So you will need to go to http://www.seamonkey-project.org/ and download
SeaMonkey 1.1.8. This program was originally known as Netscape
Communicator. The PowerPoint in this module will use
screen shots of SeaMonkey. So download the program and install it on
your computer. If you need help installing SeaMonkey, YouTube has a
video on how to
install SeaMonkey. If you want to use a different web editor
such as Dreamweaver, NVU, Adove Go LIve, etc. that is fine. Watch
a video that
discusses the toolbars of SeaMonkey. View the Northeastern
Illinois University SeaMonkey tutorial. View a PowerPoint
presentation on Web
Page Design Basics. Look
at these 10
Don'ts of Web Design Also
read the Top 10
Web Page Blunders Robin
Williams (not the
actor)
shares some views on good
and bad web page design. See what
he has to say. Back in 1996 a computer
expert identified 10
major mistakes in web page design. Are we still making the same
mistakes today? If
you really want to use Dreamweaver to create web pages and don't have
it on your computer, you can signup to use it at the Virtual Computing
Lab at NCSU. Section 2 - Searching for Information on the Web and Determining its Accuracy! The
first step in evaluation Web information is to know the kind of site
you are accessing. You can tell this by paying attention to the
domain of the web address. Some common domains are:
Another
good test of web information accuracy is the CARS
Checklist. More information is contained in the PowerPoint.
View
a PowerPoint Presentation about sources of information on the
web. http://www.ncsu.edu/cals/agexed/aee526/accurate_information.ppt Agricola
and ERIC
are two databases that index the literature of agricultural education.
You can search for topics such as FFA, 4-H, EFNEP or SAE or authors.
This is
something every agricultural education and extension education student
should know about. You need to check these two sites out. Google
Scholar (http://scholar.google.com)
is an index of the scholarly literature that exists on the web. Take it
for a test drive. Don't
believe
everything your read on the Internet or every e-mail you receive.. www.snopes.com is the place to go to
check out the validity of information.Section 3 - Registering Domain Names and Finding a Web Site Hosting Service As
long as you are a student at NCSU, you can maintain a web site on the
NCSU Server. If you work for the Extension Service or a school system,
you will probably have access to server space. However, if you want to
establish a web site out in the real world, there are two things you
will need to do:
The process
for registering a domain name is similar at
other domain registration sites such as:
A complete
list of domain name registars can be found at http://www.internic.net/alpha.html
A YouTube video about
selecting
a web host
is really an advertisment for the web site http://www.top-web-hosting-picks.com/. However, this seems
to be a pretty reliable list of top web hosting companies. I will not
bias you by telling which ones I prefer. Click on the various web
hosting sites and see which one you like. You might compare the sites
on this site with those on this site http://www.thetop10webhosting.com/. You could also
check http://webhostinggeeks.com/. They have all types
of reviews. If you want to view a geek talking about his
experience and recommendations for web hosting view http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfPKZYSIwoE&feature=related.
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Lagniappe:  |
You will find a variety of interesting stories at Snopes Daily News. |
Assignments:  |
This module has four assignments: Assignment 1. When you set up your server space on the university server, a web page was automatically created. However, it was a rather lame page that said under construction. Your first assignment is to replace that page with a better page. Even though it is not readily visible, the name of your existing home page file is index.html. There are two ways you could do this. You could "borrow" a page created by another person and then edit it by replacing their information with yours. For example you could open http://www4.ncsu.edu/~errobert/ in SeaMonkey, then click on File, Edit Page. This will then allow you to edit the page. When you are done, save it to your computer as index.html and then use a FTP program and move it to your www directory. You will replace your existing index.html page with this one. The second approach to replacing the index page is to open a new blank file in SeaMonkey and then create an entirely new page from scratch. Save this file as index.html and then FTP it to the www directory on the university server. This assignment will count for 15% of the grade for this module. Assignment 2. Now we are going to have a web site judging contest. Go to the following web sites and study them.
This assignment will count for 10% of the grade for this module. Assignment 3. You are to create a major web site. This web site could be for an extension program (such as equine, organic gardening, ECA programs, etc), high school agricultural department, agricultural business, or agricultural topic (judging livestock, soil testing, erosion control, etc.). This web site is not to be on a hobby. musical group, family tree, sports team, etc. It should be somewhat related to agricultural and extension education. The term web site means there are several pages that are created by the student, not just one page. Here are the MINIMUM requirements for this assignment: A. There is to be a home page with the file name of
project.html.
B. There must be at least four other student created pages. C. Each page must have at least one image. There can be more. D. There must be a good navigation system to move from page to page. E. There must be at least 5 links to external web sites. F. There must be at least one numbered list. G. There must be a least one bulleted list. E. There has to be an e-mail link to the creator of the site. F. There should be a title bar for the web pages. G. The site should be attractive and follow the design principles contained in this module. This assignment will count for 70% of the grade for this module. A representative sample of a past student project can be found at http://www4.ncsu.edu/~deferell/project.html. Assigment 4. Assume that you are going to create a web site for an organization, business or group with which you work. The web site will not be affiliated with your work. This web site will need a domain name and a place to be hosted. Go to one of the sites (mentioned above) that register domain names and find an available domain name. Then identify a web hosting site that you would use. Prepare a half page document telling which web hosting site you selected, the cost and why you selected it. Also tell me the domain name you choose and why. This assignment will count for 5% of the grade for this module. Save the file to your www folder as webhosting.doc. |