EDLD5365+Course+Reflection

EDLD5365 Web Design and Development is about learning the competency areas of Web site design, development, and site administration. This course helped me to have a better understanding of Web Governance, web project management, and information architecture standards. From past experiences I knew that creating and designing a web site was alot of work but this class provided me the impertinent details for how school districts implement a policy-driven web site administration. This references standard TF-I.B.3 model appropriate strategies essential to continued growth and development of the understanding of technology operations and concepts. In Education school districts must have an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) and guidelines that regulate the creation or maintenance of web sites. I learned that each campus or department should have their own web policy that clearly state linkage to School or District AUP, defined types of pages, standards for all pages, suggest content for learning sites, define content standards for administrative and academic support sites, provide school home page and web page guidelines, and also clearly define consequences for violation (including appeal process). I always knew that school districts must follow web site guidelines and procedures, but what I didn't know is that most school districts haven't included the existence of Web 2.0 technologies. Technology changes everyday and school districts must be ready to update their web policies to reflect the new security, legal, and ethical issues that are faced by Education.

The first week of the course I had to read existing school districts web policies then create one of my own that would include the existence of new Web 2.0 and social networking technologies. It was interesting to see those school districts who had robust web policies or those that needed major revision to include 21st century learning. Google Docs is a growing collaborative tool being used in Education and I enjoyed being able to see how easy and user friendly it was to use and create and share all of my documents. This references standard TF-II.D.1 provide teachers with options for the management of technology resources within the context of learning activities. During week 2 I had to create a project charter that defined a executive summary, project overview, project approach, and communications plan to manage the school's web site. After that a Step-by-Step Site Planner had to be created that mentioned the background, audience, resources, competitions, and content that would be identified in the type of web site that my school wanted to market to the community. I decided to build a web site policy for my campus which is a elementary school located in the Dallas Independent School District. The web site would be designed to further market our vanguard program and rich academic curriculum and extensive performing and visual arts program. This references standard TF-V.A.2 disseminate information on district-wide policies for the professional growth opportunities for staff, faculty, and administrators. After reading the book Deliver First Class Web Sites 101 Essential Checklists by Shirley Kaiser I was able to update my school's web policy to include the 5 usability principles from her checklists that I found beneficial that explicitly represented W3C standards. My top 5 usability principles that I chose to incorporate are maintaining the integrity of the web site, focus on the users, provide fast-loading web pages, include navigational organizational structure, and use color to enhance functionality. "It's important to organize your web site's information architecture so that so that users can find content easily...findability" (Kaiser, 2006) Including an organized content structure helps your users to navigate effectively through the web site. Understanding your users' needs will help you structure your information to ensure accessibility to your site. Also, one problem that I came across when visiting various web sites are whether the pages load fast or slow and how much time I spent waiting for the entire website to load. "Although your site's actual page load time is an important element of its usability, your users' perceptions of whether or not your site loads quickly are also important" (Kaiser, 2006). A project management schedule was created to create a timeline of the 10 critical tasks that were necessary for web site implementation and development. The highlight of the course came from conducting a web site inventory of my school districts site and learning about open source software programs Drupal and Amaya to allow users to install collaborative editing tools without learning how to use programming languages. This references standard TF-III.C.1 use methods and strategies for teaching problem-solving skills using technology resources. At the end of the course I was able to use the open source software programs to upload HTML and image files to my school site in NewSchoolSpaces.net, use Audacity to create a personal podcast, and create a personal blog about my experience with creating a Content Management Procedure for open source applications. This references standard TF-VI.A.2 assist others in summarizing copyright laws related to use of images, music, video, and other digital resources in varying formats.

I have learned that working collaboratively is the way of 21st century learning. Web 2.0 tools are making it possible for businesses, communities, individuals, students, etc. to communicate 24/7 simulatenously on various documents. No longer are people constrained to time, schedules, or locations. In Education this means that students have the opportunity for more group collaboration, problem-solving, and peer editing. This references standard TF-IV.C.1 assist teachers in using recommended evaluation strategies for improving students' use of technology resources for learning, communication, and productivity. "Our students are very much into a world that is collaborative, and because of that, they tend to see things a little bit differently" (Solomon and Schrum, 2007). The learning environment is more conducive for learning and provides open communication for discussion and feedback from others. With the availability of web 2.0 tools collaboration is easy, effective, and more efficient. "When programmers can read, redistribute, and modify the source code for a piece of software, the software evolves. People improve it, people adapt it, and people fix bugs" (Solomon & Schrum, 2007). Our job as educators is to teach students and our community how to use open source correctly and responsibly. As a lifelong learner the question that is worthy of investigation is how long will students be kept from using open source software in Education. More technology classes need to be created to show students how they can use this software for collaboration, problem-solving, and peer editing.