Creating Web Pages for Business and Marketing Education

220-790-02
July 9-12, 2001, 1:45-5:45 PM, UW-Whitewater Campus
Jo Ann Oravec
oravecj@uwwvax.uww.edu
Room 4008, Carlson Hall, 414-472-5578

Here's the description from the syllabus: Business and Marketing (Middle School and Secondary School) teachers will be provided with the technological and design tools to create a webpage using HTML.
Day 1: Introduction to the class. We'll start off with a couple of exercises that will help us learn about each other.

We'll have a QUICK Geocities introduction.
-- obtain Tripod and Geocities accounts.
-- explore Tripod and Geocities.
Introduction to graphics on the web.
-- we'll search the Internet for interesting graphics... with concern for possible copyright infringement, of course.
-- we'll also locate several web images and backgrounds for inclusion on our Geocities homepages.

BREAK

Quick introduction to HTML (tags, anchors, etc.)
-- use of HTML program "templates"
Lab period: building first website in HTML (on Geocities). There are MANY kinds of software that assist in website construction. However, HTML gives us the flexibility to finetune our creations. We will be learning HTML because it is still is the "grandparent" of website construction tools.

BREAK

Follow-up discussion on webpage construction "dos" and "don'ts".
Reflections on the day: how easy/difficult was the material we learned? How would we best teach students (or seniors, or trainees) how to construct a website?


Day 2:

First, we'll have some lecture and discussion on webpage design and maintenance. Website construction is not a "science," it is an art-- there are no rules yet, though website developers have learned much through practice and discussion. Maintenance can be tremendously time-consuming... web links become "dead links" and content changes are often needed.
More HTML commands; discussion of "hits" and website "counters."
Overview of the Internet itself... who is on-line and why?
Lab: Work on another Geocities (HTML) website.
we'll have time to comment on each other's websites.

BREAK

We'll discuss inserting sound and multimedia in websites.
Overview of how to design your website to interact with users (forms, surveys, etc.).
Hand out and discuss another Geocities website project.
Discuss general website design issues: how do we construct a complex website (with many pages and forms)? We'll discuss the "storyboarding" techniques that webmasters use.

Day 3:

Search engine discussion and lecture on providing "metainformation" about your website. (We'll discuss the general problem of how to get your website noticed on the Internet.) Special topic: Electronic Commerce and the Web, and Shopping Websites and Computer "Agents" Exercise.
(we'll have a PowerPoint presentation and related Internet exercises).
These professionally designed websites will give us many ideas for future website construction.

BREAK

Lab for another website project

BREAK

As well as reviewing the day, we will discuss:
browser differences
acccessibility issues
copyright protection issues
bandwidth issues (and we'll learn how to reduce the size of graphics)


Day 4:

We will discuss instructional design issues, and have an overview of several instructional design styles.
We will visit several websites that feature distance education webpages (such as www.utexas.edu/world/lecture).

BREAK

We'll have a final lab and website construction exercise.

At the very end of the day, we'll have an "overview quiz" to assess our progress.


Please note: There are MANY free on-line resources that will assist us in our efforts. Both Geocities and Tripod are free, and you (and your students or trainees) can use them!!


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