This project will ask you to create a "home page" for yourself
that describes yourself and some of your personal and/or professional
interests. The purposes of this project are:
- to ask you to consider how people express aspects of themselves
online, and why they might do so.
- to teach you how to build a web page, or if you already know how,
to give you practice with your HTML skills (you will use the skills
you develop in the group web page project)
- to give you a chance to practice writing and reading in digital
spaces
Since publishing a page on the World Wide Web is in fact publishing,
I am not requiring that you make the page you do for this class your
official home page. Pages will be saved in the class folder. However,
if you would like to make this your home page, I will show you how to
do so.
If you have already created a web page, you may use it as a starting
point for this assignment, but you should make sure that you continue
to develop it and that it meets all the requirements.
Requirements
There are many different ways to make a home page, and none of them
are "correct." However, in order to give you some guidance
in undertaking this project, and to give me some standards to grade
against, the following elements are required to be present for this
project to be satisfactory:
- your site must have at least two but no more than five
nodes
- you must provide a means of navigation for your users between
these nodes
- at least one (or more) of your nodes should focus on a particular
personal or professional aspect of yourself in depth. This could
include:
- an online diary or journal (with at least five entries)
- a resume or curriculum vitae
- a page devoted to a group or club you belong to
- a page devoted to a particular hobby or interest
- your site must have at least three links to outside sources
- you should demonstrate that you can manipulate images, graphics,
and text to suit your purposes
- you should include a mailto link and some contact information
Planning
In class, we will be reading and discussing why people create home
pages and all of the different elements which they can contain. You
should use these discussions to help shape the choices you will be
making about your own site. On Monday, February 21st, you will
submit a paper copy of two plans to the instructor:
-
a general plan which shows how many nodes you
will have and how they will be linked together
-
a sketch of a sample page on your site which shows
the general layout of the page including features such as text
and image placement, layout, color schemes, and navigation.
These plans may be hand-written or drawn, created on the computer,
or any combination thereof.
These plans are not set in stone, but the instructor will grade them
and give you constructive feedback, and you should use them as a basis
for constructing your actual site and explain why and how you made
changes.
Constructing Your Site
We will take class time to cover the basics of writing your own HTML
and we will briefly cover using various what you see is what you get
editors such as Netscape Composer and Microsoft FrontPage (depending
on availibility). Class time will also be given for you to work on
your pages. However, it will be your responsibility to make sure that
you have enough time to complete this assignment by the date that
it is due, including enough time to work in the labs if you need to.
There will be mandatory (and graded) peer review activities to give
you feedback on your site on February 28th and March 6th. For
the peer review activities, you will not need everything to be finished,
but you will need enough of the site in place to give your audience
an idea of what the site will be, and be able to explain your future
plans.
You should save your work on the website inside your individual folder
in the class folder. It is recommended that you also keep a copy of
your individual folder in your home directory, or on a disk. However,
the instructor will only grade the files inside your individual folder,
so make sure that the latest copies get saved there.
On March 10th, you should make sure that the final copies
of your web pages are in your individual folder within the class folder,
and send an email to the instructor explaining the following:
- which file the instructor should start with when she grades your
site
- a brief description of how your site has changed from your original
plans, and why you have made those changes
- whether or not you are interested in publishing this site as your
home page