Chapter 6: Constructing Content-Area Web Projects

Chapter 6 examines the topic of design and considers the connections between the design of products and the design of personal knowledge. The specific focus is on opportunities for content-area learning that result from the creation of web pages.

This chapter is focused on the following questions:

  • What is meant by the phrase "knowledge as design"?
  • How can the design and creation of web pages facilitate the design of knowledge?
  • What student and teacher activities typify the various stages in a cooperative group project?
  • How does the teacher interact with students to make the creation of web pages a valuable learning experience?
  • What tools can students use for constructing web pages?

Jeanie Olson's Iditarod Site

Video of interview with Jeanie Olson

A. Meaningful learning and the design process (pp. 168-179)

Design can be the process of creating a physical product or object, such as a web page. Design can also be the creating of personal understanding. Both are active and personal construction processes.

A.1 Knowledge as design

The way we think about knowledge may influence our behavior as learners and teachers.

Knowledge as transmission - Information is stored for the sake of knowing, under the assumption that it will eventually be useful. Information is passed from a more to a less knowledgeable person.

Knowledge as design - Knowledge is constructed by each individual to accomplish some purpose. Individuals create knowledge by acting on information and others can only help facilitate the construction process.

A.2 Works of mind

Students seldom have the opportunity to do "works of mind" (Perkins). They learn about content area topics, but seldom have the opportunity to function as practitioners of those disciplines. Discipline appropriate design products do not have to be completely novel or large in scale. The most important criterion is that the activity challenges the learner to use his/her knowledge and problem-solving skills to accomplish a meaningful task. The tasks of the practitioner are "scalable" and it is possible to engage learners in activities appropriate to their ability. When specific background knowledge is missing, it can be acquired as needed.

A.3 Learning communities and cooperative design teams

The aim of cooperative learning is to create situations in which students help each other learn. There are many specific cooperative methods.

A.3.a Group investigation (Sharan & Sharan)

One approach, group investigation, is particularly appropriate as a model for learning through the design of products such as web pages (Sharan & Sharan).

  • Identify the topic and form student groups
  • Team planning
  • Group inquiry process
  • Prepare product
  • Present product
  • Evaluation

A.3.b Guided discovery (Brown)

Ann Brown proposes guided discover as a productive middle ground between teacher-dominated direct instruction and pure discovery learning.

  • Teacher determines themes and suggests some related resources
  • Students generate subtopics and initial questions. Groups formed to investigate questions.
  • Groups prepare multimedia materials to teach their topic.
  • Regroup and teach each other. All students responsible for all material.

A.3.c Hypercomposition design model (Lehrer)

Multimedia product design model based on Flower and Hayes model of the writing process. The model consists of a series of stages, but recognizes the continuing role of evaluation and revision so learners often return to rework the processes of earlier stages.

  • Planning - develop theme; propose project; establish team
  • Transforming and translating - search and collect information; generate information through original research; select and integrate project appropriate information; generate product
  • Evaluate and revise

A.3.d Teacher's role

When teacher support student design projects, what is it that they do? To make use of design projects in the development of domain-specific learning and thinking processes, teachers take on the role of mentor in a mentor-apprentice relationship. The role the teacher as mentor plays is likely to change as the apprentice becomes more experienced. The role changes from:

  • model
  • coach
  • observe

B. Student hypermedia projects (pp. 179-189)

B.1 Using a web authoring program

Web pages are built from a combination of:

  • multimedia elements (text, images, movies, etc.)
  • links providing access to other web pages
  • the HTML language (hypertext markup language) which tells the browser how to display the multimedia elements

B.1.a HTML

The idea of a markup language may at first seem foreign. However, anyone who has used a word processing program has assigned markup tags to text. The purpose might be to center a segment of text on the page or to change the text style to bold. The process is typically to select the desired segment of text and then use a key combination (e.g., control-b) or a selection from the menubar to assign the tags.

The consequence inserting tags has on the text, but not the tags themselves is typically what is visible. Word processing programs use a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) method allowing users to view the final product and mostly ignore the tags responsible for the appearance of the product. WordPerfect has a unique feature which allows a simultaneous display of the text display and the raw text with tags (see Figure).

Figure: WordPerfect WYSIWYG and Text with Tags

As authoring products evolve, the trend has been to move toward a WYSIWYG approach. Those who used word processing software ten or so years ago had directly enter the commands to center and bold text. This is no longer necessary. The same trend is evident but has not advanced to quite the same degree with web page authoring programs. The web authoring programs students use will mostly allow page elements to be manipulated at the WYSIWYG-level. Those who wish to do advanced design projects will sometimes work with tags directly.

Here are some examples of HTML tags.

To center text
<center>Center</center>

To set text style to bold
<b>bold</b>

To create a link to an external page
<a href="http://grabe.psych.und.nodak.edu">Grabe page</a>

When you are viewing pages online, you can examine the HTML responsible for the page appearing on your monitor. Go to the View Menu and select the page source option.

B.1.b Web page components

It is helpful to be aware of the basic components from which web pages are constructed. A basic list of components might include:

  • background color
  • raw text
  • headings, text styles, and other text characteristics
  • lists
  • images, sounds, movies, and other multimedia elements
  • links
  • horizontal rules
  • tables
Figure: Page Showing Components (this is an image so links do not function)

B.1.c Creating a table

Web page authoring programs allow tables to be inserted using a button or menu option. Attributes of the table (number of rows and columns, visibility of the table borders, justification of data within cells) can then be controlled by selecting options or entering values in an editor.

Learning to create and manipulate tables requires some time, but tables offer an important advantage in developing more complex web pages. Tables allow the web page to be divided into distinct areas and thus allow greater control over the placement of web page components.

B.1.d Alternative ways to construct web pages

The book emphasizes the use of general-purpose web page authoring software, but there are some other useful approaches.

B.1.d.1 Web authoring software developed specifically for students

There are several products that have been developed in an effort to simplify and focus the process of creating web pages.

Figure: Web Workshop and Resulting Web Page

B.1.d.2 Tool software

A surprising range of software tools (e.g., word processing, spreadsheets) allow content to be saved as HTML. To determine if this is the case for a specific program available to you, examine the "save as" options to determine if HTML appears.

Tool software accomplishes the transition to HTML by:

  • tag conversion - a translation function looks for the tags used by the tool software (e.g., the tags to bold text) and converts these tags to the corresponding HTML tags
  • additional functions added to many tool programs - e.g., word processing software may have a tool for inserting links. The web link functions within the word processing document (it launches a web browser to display the appropriate web page), but it is also converted to an embedded link when the document is saved as HTML.

B.1.d.3 Programs functioning as plug-ins

Some programs create files that can "played" by a plugin operating within a web browser. The example used in the book is HyperStudio. HyperStudio is a multimedia authoring program used in many schools. If the user has the proper plugin installed, the file created by HyperStudio, which is called a "stack", can be sent over the Internet and will appear and function "within" a web browsers. Think of this as downloading a miniature version of another program.

11/24/02