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Web
Pages for Classroom Teachers
Basic Web Page Concepts for Teachers
Web
pages are reasonably simple beings. They contain, basically, only three types
of information:
Text.
Pictures.
Links to other web pages.
Word
2003 provides the
tools with which a teacher can create web pages using the friendly
environment of his or her regular word processor. The "art" of
creating a web page comes in arranging and formatting those three web page
components.
TEXT
Web
pages can contain any amount of text. Word 2003 lets the teacher type
the text she or he wishes Internet users to read. The text can then be
formatted in any of the ways that Word 2003 normally formats text.
The size of the text can be adjusted to
help organize the information.
The text can be colored, using Word
2003's text tools.
The text can be emphasized -- that is, it
can be boldfaced, italicized, or underlined.
The text can be aligned to the left,
right, or centered.
The text can be put into numbered lists or
bulleted lists.
The text can be displayed in any font --
however, the teacher must consider that selected fonts will be displayed
only if the other person has that font installed. It is important, then,
not to use exotic fonts for the text in web pages. There are two fonts -- Times
New Roman and Arial -- that have come with every copy of Windows.
When creating a web page, it is best to use only those two fonts; otherwise,
the other person looking at the web page may not see what you want him or her
to see. (To use exotic fonts, you must embed those in a graphic and place
that graphic in your web page as a picture.)
PICTURES
Pictures
can be placed anywhere on a web page. As with text, pictures can be aligned
left, right, or centered, just as they can be in Word 2003. There are
several considerations when including pictures in your web page:
Large pictures take a long time to
"draw" on the screen. Similarly, large numbers of pictures on a
page will cause it to be slow to "load." If a page is too slow,
many readers will cancel the visit and will never actually see your page. It is,
therefore, important to use reasonably small pictures and to spread those
over several pages, whenever possible.
Everything that is not text is a picture.
For example, the bullets to the left of each item in this list are pictures.
The background texture on this page is a picture that your browser software
loads in the background of your screen.
There are two basic types of pictures --
actually called "images" or "graphics" in most web
literature -- that can easily be placed on a web page. Each type is defined
by the format in which the picture is digitized and saved on your computer.
One type is called a "GIF" file because the extension to the file
name is ".GIF" (an abbreviation for "graphic information
file). The other type is called a "JPEG" file because its file name
extension is ".JPG" (or ".JPEG" in systems that can use
more than three characters in the file extension).
GIF and JPEG files are ideal for web pages
because they are saved in reasonably small file sizes. Remember that larger
pictures take a long time to "load" on a web page; so, the smaller
the file size, the better. Both GIF and JPEG files store high quality
pictures in small file sizes. (Other file formats -- like "TIFF"
files -- lose resolution and picture quality when their sizes are reduced.)
Pictures must be saved in the same
directory with the web page that uses the picture. Word 2003 will save
a copy of any picture you place on a web page into the appropriate directory
when you save the web page itself.
LINKS TO OTHER WEB PAGES
The
real power of web pages in education comes from the resources on other web
pages to which you provide links. You can link to two type
of pages: (1) another page on your web site, or (2) a page on someone else's
web site.
Links
to other web sites are created in two steps, using Word 2003.
Basically, you type the text you want to use to name or describe the site or
page to which you're linking. Then, you assign to that text the URL -- the
web address -- of that site or page. (URL stands from "universal
resource locator" -- just in case someone ever asks you.)
When
the URL is assigned, the format of the text changes to indicate it represents
a link.
By placing text, pictures, and links in a Word 2003
document, you can create a web page with very little effort. Once saved on an
Internet server, your web page begins to provide resources to anyone who
accesses that page.
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