For teachers who want to conduct a global education project with their students, setting up a website can be a daunting experience. This is because it is usually one of the first steps in the project and takes place when the teacher’s knowledge and confidence are at their lowest. Moreover, many teachers see web design as an arcane technical activity that requires a high GQ (geek quotient) for success.
It doesn’t need to be like this. Setting up a website can be quick, cheap and even fun. If you can use a site like Facebook, you can create a website for your class project (More about Facebook later….)
Over the next few blog posts, I will walk you through the steps that I am taking to set up the website for my 2012 global education project. The goal is that you should be able to get a similar website up and running in only a few hours, with the students then doing the bulk of the work to populate the site with interesting content.
As with anything in life, planning is key. It is essential that you decide, in advance, what you want your website to look like. So, spend a few minutes exploring some education blogs and note the things that you might want to include in yours. Consider colours, fonts and graphics. Most of all, take a moment to write down all of the things that annoy you when you are surfing the web. That cute flashing graphic might appear cute on the first visit but your aim is to have visitors return again and again and again. If in doubt, keep it simple.
Next, create a mockup of your website. A big piece of butcher’s paper will work just fine. However, I have enjoyed using a nifty little iPad app called iMockups. This is a tool which lets you quickly create a ‘wireframe’ version of your website. Unlike a piece of butcher’s paper, however, iMockups let’s you move elements around and experiment with different colours and proportions until you find a look and feel that you are happy with.
Here is my current mockup for the EarthShaker Project’s website:
iMockups includes a realistic preview mode which allows you to visualize how visitors will navigate through your site. Of course, the one thing it doesn’t do is create your website for you. That will be the topic of my next post: creating a website using WordPress.
Time: 1 hour
Cost: $A 7.49 (cost of iMockups from iTunes App Store)
