Course: Internet Applications & Web Page Design
Final Project: Educational Web Site
The final project for ECI 719 was the creation of an educational website using a web development tool of choice. I chose to use WordPress. This site is for incomming college students with limited technology understanding. Final grade was a 93% and my professor’s comments follow:
This site really shows what is possible within WordPress. Even when frustrating at times you can really make a well-designed and interactive site with this tool. This site will surely meet the needs of its intended audience – great job!
Website Development Reflection
When I started the final project to develop a website it was confusing. I did not understand why we didn’t have all the information about the project. Slowly the pieces fell into place. I wanted to use Dreamweaver to develop my site but now I am so glad I was not allowed to. If I had used Dreamweaver, I would have learned more about web development and less about web educational content. The content would not have been the most important thing. I would have worked more on buttons and links and placement. Instead, I concentrated on the content and the interaction with students. I hope students who are apprehensive with technology and using computers find the site helpful.
As I developed my site with WordPress I struggled with the technology. I wanted to do things that WordPress would not allow. For example, I wanted to embed videos and interactive applications within my content. I discovered that WordPress would not allow it because of security risks. I can understand their concerns. I was able to embed some interaction within the sidebar, Twitter and Wallwisher. As an educational web development tool, WordPress is user friendly and powerful. The fact that our professor used it for our course site encouraged me to give it a try. Before this project, I used Google Sites, Blackboard, Moodle and Dreamweaver for web educational content development. WordPress has proven to be more customizable and flexible than the others. Of course Blackboard is a great content management tool but it is not flexible. The most you can do to customize a course is changing button style or add a banner. You can choose your tools and it does have a great gradebook and assessment tools. I can see why we have Moodle and a course website. I see why we have Ning. It is wonderful for discussions and groups. It is a shame that these tools cannot be totally integrated. If we could create one account for students giving them access to all of these tools with one sign in we would really have something.
My first attempt at interactivity was to use a polling tool provided by WordPress. It was ok but I found I could get more control with Google Docs and a form. Unfortunately, the embedding tool used an iframe which was disallowed by WordPress. None the less, a link to the form provided a workable assessment tool. I will get results from the student responses in a spreadsheet and I will also get summary results. I was also able to customize my response to their submittals. I will be able to analyze their initial understanding of the content. It would be nice to see some of the projects the students produce after the training provided on my site. If we can develop a learning community, I will be able to continue supporting them in their quest to become the new professionals in our society and see the results they produce in projects.
The project begins with the Welcome page.
