Michael C. Warren

Technology and Education

Archive for the ‘EDLD 5365 Web Mastering’ Category

EDLD 5370 Reflections on assignments in 5365 Web Design

with 3 comments

The assignments for Web Design and Development offered me a unique perspective of what the name suggested it covered.  Our first assignment was useful because it had us create a website policy.  This something our school district needs to improve upon so that we can put certain standards into place.  This assignment falls into Standard VI of the ISTE’s Technology Facilitation standards, in which individuals have to set policies and procedures for how technology is used.

The development of the website project charter was very interesting to me.  As a former web developer for a web development firm I did not see these in our company, that is not to say they were not used. If they were they were kept between the client and the sales department.  I can see how the charter is very useful in the sense that it controls who is involved in the development process, and what is expected to be completed in the scope of the project.

I don’t feel that week 3 and 4 exercises really lived up to the possibilities that they could have been.  While Amaya is an open source web development tool it lacked in features and usability to other products that are readily available. As a technologist, nor as a technology teacher are we really being good advisors with limited understanding of how something works.  Our district is a prime example. Our technology department consists of a head IT person, an assistant, and a contract person who is employed by our Internet provider.  None of these individuals have an understanding of web development. Since I came on board with the district until this school year, I have been the web developer for our district. This is a second responsibility that was to go along with my primary teaching responsibilities.  While we do now have a product called eChalk in place, and I have passed the key responsibility over to the art teacher who keeps the site up to date, I am still called in to look at programming details for the site.

Over the course of 5 weeks we could have covered basic HTML or if we were to have used a 30 day trial of Adobe Dreamweaver there could have been a deeper understanding of Web Design and Development in the course.

The final assignment of the project launch planning was a good assignment that I put together as a plan for our release of eChalk in our district.  However the followthrough has yet to match with the plan.  Often slowed by teachers that do not want to update their part of the site, and other problems that arise. However through observation we are learning how to continue to make changes to improve each new task we implement.

Assignments

Create a Web Policy for your school