Week 5 Journal Entry

A service called Internet hosting service allows companies to purchase space on the internet. Web hosts have servers that one can use to create a website. DropBox has been great to learn and use during this class. I learned some new information about web host and their providers. A website can only be online if one has it hosted by a provider. One must have an address and a platform on which to build it. When working with files one should know many different things. When one goes to a website it is important to be aware of what files one will be able to view or use. JPG files will show up most of the time and that is what I have always used and it has worked. When such files as JPG or PNG do not work one need’s to download the ADOBE reader. As teachers, we need to know what type of file size that we are working with. Small file sizes will take up less space and are a lot quicker to open. If the website takes a long time to load one might close out of it and move on to something else. When you name files try and keep it simple. This will help one to stay organized and locate their files. There are several things one should do while adding picture files. Some of these include changing the size; photos should be scanned in files of pg, png, and gif, pictures that are big take up more space, and always give credit to one when using a different picture. Embedding will make a website stand out. This is where one can take a file and make it appear in a web page. When items are embedding in a website it is easier to use. Language needs to be easy to read on a website. When one has too many colors and bold font it is hard to understand the message one is trying to get across. Some teachers make a website to plan on using but never update it throughout the school year. This is a great and easy way to communicate with teachers, parents, and students. One should update website weekly with current information. The second article that I read was about design. Most importantly what I got from this article was to keep it simple. Design gives the first impression to a user rather they love it or hate it. When the design is easy to follow then it helps the user to navigate through the website. One must use communication effectively through text, images, and space. When creating an educational website one has to remember that not all people using the website will be technology savvy. When one is looking for a font to use it is good to know which fonts are available on all computers. The most common fonts are serif, sans, serif, cursive, fancy, and monospace.The best practices checklist allows one to have a guide while making a website. This is a good helpful checklist to see if one is in the right direction while making a website. I still enjoy working on my website. This week I have completed three pages home, about me, and parent pages. Something that I changed this week was my word documents to PDF files. I also added my photo gallery page to my about me and it is a slide show. I have started to work on my student page. Here I will keep students up-to-date with homework and helpful websites. My job is to provide students and parents with as much resources and information as possible for their child to be successful. I will continue to add to my website throughout the class and finalize each page.