Maintaining a Student-Based Website Using New Tools

Maggie Smith, Bleckley County High School

I am the Media Specialist at Bleckley County High School and work with the business education teacher to maintain a student updated website.  We closely monitor student work and have to edit the pages sometimes to keep the school site consistent.  I saw two new applications at the Educational Technology Conference that would help us monitor the process more closely and keep the site consistent and visually appealing.

Synopsis:

This article explains some uses for new software available to educators to allow students and other faculty to edit content on the web without learning cumbersome applications and without changing the consistency of the website.

Products:

Two new products were of interest to our school and its commitment to maintain a student-based website.  Mediator 8 utilizes an easy-to-use application which converts information into Flash.   The implications for this will be far reaching as students can manipulate and create web pages without the time involved in learning how to write pages using Flash programming. 

Another program which is an add-on to the Macromedia Suite is called Contribute.  This program allows the webmaster or teacher to lock certain areas of the web site so that others cannot damage the backgrounds or other components.  The webmaster sets up a template to allow for changing content only.  This will allow for an easier initial setup of whole class website design.  Each student will be assigned a particular page to update regularly.  Using Contribute, the background, paths, and inherent html structure will not be damaged. 

Skills/Knowledge Required:

Mediator 8 and Contribute were presented within the hour assigned for the workshop at the GaETC.  The programs seemed very user-friendly and could easily be taught to other faculty members and students within the same time frame. 

Conclusion:

These products offer the web design instructor great tools to allow students to actively participate in the school web site.  The worries of teaching a difficult web programming application will be diminished due to the ease of these programs.  By keeping the website consistent, Contribute will save the webmaster a lot of time by allowing other users to update and upload the web pages.

Session Information:
Session 44- Wed. 3:15-4:15
Flash and Web Design Made Easy
Presented by:  Dave Hamilton, MatchWare, Inc.

Session 210- Fri. 9:45-10:45
How to Design a School Website
Presented by:  Leslie Fisher, Featured Speaker

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