The core skill this project was meant to teach was creating and manipulating images in Adobe Fireworks, then using that image in a webpage. In particular, we were tasked with embedding several links within a single image on a webpage.
This project happened to fall while I was covering the electromagnetic spectrum in both the courses I teach. Since this topic divides very easily into subtopics, it seemed a natural subject for this project. As it turns out, this page was a helpful resource to some of my students. The textbook for my 9th grade course is written at a higher reading level than some of my students are ready for, so many struggle with an assignment I give to read about each subtype of electromagnetic wave and identify some of the applications. When writing the text for this website, I tried to focus on applications for each wave type while keeping the sentence structure and vocabulary simpler than in the textbook. As a result, students who had trouble using the book to complete the assignment were able to finish using this webpage. In addition, my more advanced students who wanted to learn more hand a launching pad to find more detailed information.
My experience with this assignment shows some of the value in learning to design a basic webpage as a teacher. By building a website, I was able to make differentiated readings accessible to any student who needed or wanted it without causing embarrassment that would come with handing struggling students a paper article. My district uses Blackboard as a learning management system, where I could certainly post the same text and links I put on the website, but something about leaving Blackboard to visit an external website with some basic design lead my students to treat the content with more authority than they would an uploaded document. I am now considering what other topics it may be worth my time to write and design a simple website for my students.
Interactive Concept Web
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