No more are small towns isolated from the rest of the world. If students who have lived all their lives in a rural town want to know what it is like in the big city, they can email other schools to get keypals. Communication between schools is instantaneous whereas before, penpals had to wait days, maybe weeks, to get a response to a letter with simple questions. Cooperative groups are no longer limited to only the students in one class or even in one school. The Web is teeming with collaborative, online projects that can include responses or data collected from students in different cities, states, and countries. Where before, the teacher would post student work on a bulletin board or in the local library for the community to see, now students can share their work with millions of people world-wide who are connected to the Internet through WWW publishing. HTML is easy enough for non-programmers to learn and if that was not sufficient, software like Claris Homepage or Microsoft Frontpage allow teachers and students to create awesome web pages without knowing any HTML.

      More and more teachers are discovering the richness of publishing student work on the web. The web offers more than just another medium on which to post student work. As just another kind of bulletin board, the web can catapult students projects throughout thewhole world. Anyone or any class with an Internet connection can access another class’ web site. If that was all there was to web publishing, then it would not be much more than an extended bulletin board, but even beyond that, the web offers people around the world the opportunity to communicate with the authors. It offers interactivity, the key ingredient that children of the Nintendo-age are familiar with and crave. The authors of classroom web sites, in most cases, will be the students. A web page with a contact email address, invites those reading it to write the authors to critique, compliment, or just plain say they saw the web site. Children who have their work published on the WWW know that millions of people can see their work and that those who wish can write back. Web sites can have surveys or forms, or CGI programs can be made to have people write their feelings, reactions, or comments to the site right there on the page. The CGI script can then remake the web page adding the new comments within minutes. The possibilities are endless.

      So as instructors and educators of 21st century classrooms, it behooves us to become better acquainted with the technologies of the time. A few years ago it may have been enough to make a classroom web page with student work, but now web sites and web projects need more complexity and richness. It is no longer enough to see examples of student writing on a web page because that does not maximize on the Internet’s potential. Some of the best projects out there can be found as part of organizations such as The Global School Network’s (GSN) Cyber Fair Projects (http://www.gsn.org/cf/index.html) or the online contest, ThinkQuest (http://www.advanced.org/thinkquest/index.html). Their higher levels of excellence bring out the best in what teachers and students all over the world have to offer. And what makes them not just good as web sites, but also valuable, is that they provide useful information, they educate. Part of the very judging process of ThinkQuest is looking for sites that use collaboration between different schools, more points going to those teams that are farther apart including in different countries, that create participation by other students, permits sharing of ideas, and encourages others to provide data, that is educational and has a learning objective as well as have, "an interactive, participatory, collaborative style that encourages students to explore the Internet's timely resources and create new relationships broadening the community in which they live" (http://www.advanced.org/thinkquest/compete/com-rulesfr.html), that has good quality and correctly cites anything not created by its team members, and finally, that it is used by other students and/or teachers. That is quite a plateful. The Internet has brought forth the information age. Information abounds in cyberspace and it is becoming easier to get at. What is most distasteful about the vast information that exists on the Internet is the unusable, obsolete, or just plain superfluous material that can be found just as easy as the useful.

      A web site should have something worthwhile or of interest to the surfer, which means information that is accurate, up-to-date, and pertinent. Another aspect an educational web site has is that it keeps growing. The days of static web pages are numbered. A staticweb page, even if brilliantly designed with accurate, up-to-date, pertinent information only needs to be visited once. And in the information age, an up-to-date page will not stay current for long. That is why web sites need to inform people when they were last updated. Of the plain informational web site, the most popular ones are those that allow the user to customize and/or personalize their own homepage like My Yahoo (http://my.yahoo.com/) and Excite (http://www.excite.com/). Users have their own login name and password to bring up their own web page with only the information they want without having to dig or search through pages and pages of garbage. Another popular thing on the web is the use of Portals. According to Jesse Berst, "Portals are Web sites that act as gateways to the Internet. They typically offer search, free content, free email and community services," (http://www.zdnet.com/anchordesk/story/story_2380.html). Your one-stop place. Berst goes on to say that Portals are just a phase but that this phase is indicative of what people, web users, want and need which goes back to My Yahoo and other such personalization sites. Berst says, "Soon they [portals] will morph into hubs and home bases. To do that, they'll need more than the ‘content, community and commerce’ cited by pundits. They'll also need customization, communications, conveniences (services) and coherence." The problem with portals is that they change too much and too often. Users need stability, like returning to a safe place that they have control over.

      Classroom web sites need to take all these things into account. And those that are considered the best, that are still visited and used even though they were created a year or two ago, incorporate many of the elements mentioned above. In my curriculum, I have managed to find ways to incorporate web publishing, but so far, in looking back at the projects I have had students publish on the web, they are of the static, non-growing type. Not only that, but I am not too pleased with the content. The excellent sites that I have looked through have all had very good content, better than I have any sixth grader write. Another element excellent sites seem to have, though of course not all, is the use of programming in the form of CGI or advanced Javascripting. I know neither Perl or C to program CGI scripts nor do I know Javascript beyond going to a site that offers free scripts. That means that I need to learn enough scripting to make my students’ sites interactive. Due to time constraints and limited computer lab time, I have managed to publish one or two projects a year on the web. Three such projects were part of online collaboratives while the fourth was just a small research project that I created myself for my one class.

      The first online collaborative project I participated in was The Road to the Whitehouse II. That project is no longer accessible on the actual project page, but I still have a copy of my students’ work on Geocities at http://www.geocities.com/EnchantedForest/Dell/3446/rttw.html. That was my first attempt at publishing student work on the web. It is static, no links to outside sources and the students’ pages are uninspiring to say the least. I am being hard on them only because I have seen what is possible. We spent a great deal of time researching and writing for The Road to the Whitehouse II and I feel that it reflects poorly on me since I did the final proofreading and recommendations on those reports.

      My second attempt at publishing student work on the web was through participation in the Mayaquest ‘97 online adventure. The reports were much better in this one, the site was still static, expect for my email address at the bottom. That was an improvement for it opened the way for those reading our reports to write to the authors via myself. Luckily, Mayaquest does not shut down older sites with student work, but they did move it so it took a while of digging through their archives to find my students’ work at http://www.classroom.com/mayaquest/mayaquest97/images/kidgal/blueheron/pageone.html. In this project, I provided links to some of the resources I used, meaning copies of the handouts I made for the kids, and students provided links to sources they used. We alsohad to write on webmaster for permission to use some of her material.

      My third project was a step down from the successes of the second because I did it with a seventh period class of trouble-making students who had not signed up for anything so were not happy with what they got. All the seventh grade core teachers took turns at teaching seven weeks of this class making continuity slightly impossible. Still, having only seven weeks with those sweet children was more than enough. I found the perfect project for them to work through I*EARN, http://www.iearn.org/iearn/, and I didn’t even have to pay because I just published the students’ work on Geocities. The introductory page had my email address, mentioned when the page(s) had been last updated and provided a briefdescription of what the project was all about. Links led to the students’ reports which were the worst reports I have ever read in my life. There was no motivation in those kids and even the good ones were brought down by the overall lack of energy. All three of these web projects were done during that first year I learned how to make a web page and it was disappointing. On the side, I had two teams of two students each who wanted to part icipate in the ThinkQuest competition. We met afterschool sometimes, but they did very little and our projects never got off the ground. They were daunted by the quality of work that usually won that competition.

      My next year teaching I did not join any online collaborative projects. I was at a new school and had to learn my way around. I was kept quite busy also just learning a new curriculum and keeping up with everything that was already in place. I did manage to make a web project for one of my classes from the very curriculum I was working with. We were studying Mt. Saint Helens through a volcano unit because we took the whole sixth grade up to Cispus Camp near Mt. Saint Helens for a week of camping, learning and bonding. The trip was early in the year so after we came back with information on the resting volcano, I led my students through further research to show them how to search the web. This web site had the same beginning elements as the Mayaquest one, an introductory page with links to the handouts I created to help the kids do the research and write their reports. I included my email address and the date of the most recent changes or additions. The reports were satisfactory with some good bibliographies, meaning that some actually learned how to write a bibliography since we all used the same source for information and had received permission to use anything we needed from their site (http://www.geocities.com/~educatoral/cmsworks.html). Still, as before, people visited the site when I emailed everyone the URL. Most wrote back commenting how wonderful it was and then it died out. Very quickly. I was disappointed because it took so long to do and I had to beg and plead to get more lab time.

      I was not idle last year though because me efforts the year before at web page publishing earned me the opportunity to teach a class about making web pages. I am very happy with the results of that class even though it still needs a lot work in order to be really worthwhile for my students (http://www.geocities.com/~educatoral/advtech/tech.html). From one of those web page making classes, a group of three students volunteered to enter the ThinkQuest competition again. Although I had learned more about web page creation, I was, and still am, far from being able to produce a winning page. I informed my students of that. They were all excited at first and had the best of circumstances to work under, 50 minutes of class time everyday. They dropped the ball. They did no research and wanted me to do everything. I helped as much as I could, but I was not about to do the research for them and come up with the overall design. I was disappointed. At the same time, two pairs of students from my sixth grade science classes volunteered to try the ThinkQuest Junior contest for younger children in grades four through six, http://www.advanced.org/tq-junior/. One group found it too much work and for a while there the other did too. They, again, wanted me to do all the work. As the deadline approached one team brought me a disk with some information they found on their topic. I had little time, but managed to work with them to create a web page. We submitted it in time, but it was wrought with errors (http://tqjunior.advanced.org/3680/). Overall I must say that I was very proud with our effort and am very confident that I can do better with a new team this coming school year. ThinkQuest is too daunting for middle school children when they see what 18 and 19 year olds are creating. But Thinnest Junior, although still difficult for me, is within the scope of what I can possibly attain to.

      I need to learn more about CGI without having to learn Perl. I want interactivity on my students’ pages. I want people to use our web sites and come back often. I would like to create maybe one site next year that keeps us busy all year as teams of students domore research while other teams answer questions that people write and while other teams still work on more original artwork. Each project or web page that I have made in the past has had its own design. I think one mistake I have made, which I thought was great at the time, was to try and link them all together with no logical sense. I have mixed home life with school life and that does not work. It should be about the kids and not about me. My school web work needs a major overhaul and I think maybe this year it is time to start fresh. I have liked the idea of different sets of web pages having one single design, while other sets having their unique design. I do not want one overall design for everything since there are many different projects and segments. But there I go again, I need to cut down what goes into the Mr. Gonzalez class web site. Student work will be the main theme with links for teachers to find resources as well as ties to the Washington State Essential Academic Learning’s (EALR’s). This new undertaking will be part of the middle school page I’m developing (http://www.geocities.com/~educatoral/middleschool.htm) and should be housed on the district or school server instead of in my personal Geocities site.

      I now have renewed vigor and, better than that, direction and focus. I still believe in simplicity of design for the average user is barely connecting at 28,800 Kbps. My school will getting a T1 connection soon and that will make it far too tempting to include fancy pictures and sounds and even video, but I want to stay away and teach my kids to stay away from "eye-candy" and concentrate on focus. Even large graphics can slow down a web page’s loading which means that the person accessing it will just hit the back button. I will use more thumbnails and remember to add the height and width attribute to the image tag, so that the rest of the page will load even if the picture has not loaded. The alt attribute to the image tag is an excellent one to use because while someone is waiting for the picture to load, s/he can read a description of it to see if it is worth the wait.

Resources

Characteristics of Effective Student Web Projects,
http://www.gsn.org/web/charact/index.htm.

Reinventing Schools, The Nintendo Generation,
http://www.nap.edu/readingroom/books/techgap/navigate.cgi