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Reflecting Poole

Creating Your Own Web Site

You're a teacher and you want to create your own Web site, but you don't know where to start. Or you train pre-service or in-service teachers and you want them to create their own Web sites. You'd like to give them guidelines to help them along the way. The set of handouts provided at the end of this article should do the trick.

The handouts, which I developed for my students in the Division of Education at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, USA, will get you or your students started creating a Web site. And, if you complete all the handouts, they'll take you to the point at which you'll have a substantial teacher-oriented Web presence. You'll still have a lot to learn about Web page design and about the whole craft of "Web Mastering," but you'll feel confident about your ability to create and maintain content-rich Web pages of your own.

These handouts assume you have Internet Explorer installed on your computer -- although you can use them equally well with Mozilla's free open source browser FireFox or a built-in Netscape Web page editor.

The handouts are designed for use with Microsoft's SharePoint Designer -- but you should have no difficulty adapting them for use with another editor of your choice, including Macromedia's DreamWeaver or the free open source Nvu (pronounced N-View) editor.

The first handout, "Getting Started," helps users set up a free Web-site account in SuperFreeHost.org. The reason I like SuperFreeHost.org for my students is because it frees them from dependence on the university Web servers; after they graduate, they can continue to maintain the Web site without missing a beat. But it should be easy enough to adapt the directions for other Web-site environments; you would just need to get the appropriate setup and upload steps from your specific Internet service provider (ISP).

The directions in the remaining handouts hopefully are clear and concise. I've numbered them from 1 to 12 to help you keep them in order on your disk or hard drive. If you need further assistance, don't hesitate to e-mail me at [email protected].

Here they all are, and good luck!

About the Author

Bernie Poole, an associate professor of education and instructional technology at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown, Pennsylvania, has been a teacher since 1966. For the first 15 years of his career, he taught English, history, French, or English as a foreign language primarily to middle school children in England, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Poole has published several books related to instructional technology. Two of the latest editions are available free of charge online at http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/. He also has developed and maintains with Yvonne Singer the EdIndex, an extensive index of Web resources for teachers and students that can be accessed at http://www.pitt.edu/~poole/edmenum.html.

Author Name: Bernie Poole
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Updated 03/03/2013