So, what’s the point of all this effort we went through to create our own curriculum-specific webpages and a front page HTML file? Some of the benefits are obvious. Searching out appropriate, curriculum-specific websites ahead of time allows the teacher to determine what resources are available on the Internet and to determine which websites are appropriate for classroom use.

Storing the URL’s of these websites in a bookmark file and ultimately converting this file into a curriculum-specific webpage is a process that saves a tremendous amount of classroom research time. It also provides a means of monitoring and directing the students’ access to Internet resources. While it is still possible to leave the websites that are linked to the curriculum-specific webpages, students are less likely to stumble onto undesirable websites than if they were involved in totally random web searching.

It is possible to reconfigure the web browser so that the teacher-designed webpages are the default homepage of the browser. This ensures that the browser will open on and return to the teacher’s webpage every time the Home button is clicked. Check the Help Files on your web browser for directions specific to your browser.

The Future

Another benefit of creating webpages is the ability to create a fully-functional website that runs entirely off your local floppy disk drive or your local hard disk drive without an active Internet connection.

Using an HTML Editor like Netscape Composer, you can create webpages on a variety of topics, importing text and graphics from your word processing and graphics programs. You can even download entire websites from the Internet and store them on your local drive (be sure to include the graphics files and to save everything into the same folder!) You may need to use the HTML Editor to modify the links using the same principles we learned in this class.

You will then be able to use your web browser to access these file. This is called an Intranet and is currently one of the hottest topics of discussion on the Internet, particularly in the corporate and education fields where file safety and the need for control Internet access is the greatest. An understanding of HTML allows you to create HyperLinked documents without the need for additional software beyond Netscape Communicator Suite.

HTML offers the additional benefit of being non-platform-specific. HTML files will function on a PC as well as a Mac or UNIX machine (provided you save the files on a PC formatted disk). In the mixed platform computing environment that exists at many school sites, this is a definite plus. As schools create their local area networks (LAN’s) and Intranets, mixing computers with different operating systems (Mac, Windows 3.1, Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, and UNIX), creating files in a language that can be used on all platforms is a definite advantage.

The business community has already discovered this fact and is rapidly moving in the direction of using the HTML / Web Browser format as the common denominator in managing their local networks. The education community won’t be that far behind. Understanding HTML and Web Technology will be a definite advantage for the educator leading his/her school into the next decades

HTML is, without a doubt, the cutting-edge of educational technology. I am convinced that this is the way curriculum and even textbooks will presented in the years ahead. The non-linear presentation format of HTML is ideally suited to the learning styles of the students coming into our classrooms. Familiarity with HTML and Web Technology will definitely give our students an advantage as they move from our classrooms into the workplace.

We are all on the edge of one of the most revolutionary shifts in communication and educational technology that has come along since the invention of movable text and the printing press. Hang on… the next decade is going to be a wild ride.

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