Spice Up Your Class Website

Spice Up Your Class Website !

Take your website to the next level - Web 2.0! Web 2.0 means greater website creativity. It involves interaction by the user through blogs, podcasts, widgets, wikis, and other interactive tools. It's a movement away from static websites. There are many ways to add spice to your site, all of which can spark interest, and hopefully increase traffic to it. Below are several ways you can do this. If you go to this sample site, you'll be able to see almost all of the items listed below. Give one or more of them a try!

Click on a topic below...	Description
Formatting Text – Text size, Bolding, Underlining, Italics, Color	Make your text stand out...
Links - Add Hyperlinks to Your Webpage...	Provide links on your webpage for people to go to.
Cool Images (even animated ones) - Placing images/animations on your website...	Why accept plain and boring? Put cool graphics on your site.
Video – Embed a Teachertube Video On Your Site...	Let your website viewers view an educational video when they're at your site!
Widgets Widgets Widgets!!!	Widgets let your website viewers to interact with your site.
Music with Playlist.com - Place a music player on your site that plays a song or two when clicked...	Provide a music player on your site that will play a song or two that you select.
Podcasts - Create a Link to a Podcast...	Let your webpage visitors click on a link to listen to an educational podcast!
Subscribing to your site as a student or parent (ClassJump.com only)...	For classjump sites only. This allows parents to get an email every time you enter a new assignment!

Formatting Text - Text size, Bolding, Underlining, Italics, Color

Format Type	Text Before	Code	Text After
Change text size	hello	<font size="16">hello</font>	hello
Bold	hello	<b>hello</b>	hello
Underline	hello	<u>hello</u>	hello
Itallic	hello	<i>hello</i>	hello
Color	hello	<font color="red">hello</font>	hello

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Links - Add Hyperlinks to Your Webpage...
Create hyperlinks in your web page when you want people to click on a word on your page to take them to a new site.
1. Let's say you have the words CLICK HERE on your website and when people click on those words, you want them to be taken directly to yahoo.com.
2. Replace the words CLICK HERE with <a href="http://www.yahoo.com/" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a>. You can use this method with any website you want. You would just need to change the address. And you can change the words CLICK HERE to whatever you want as well. The target="blank" function opens the website in a new window. If you don't want a new window to open simply take out target="blank".

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Cool Images (even animated ones) - Placing images/animations on your website...
1. Find your image on the internet. A good source is google images (go to www.google.com, click on images and search for a specific image). Once you've found one, if using google images, try to view the image in full size.
2. Once you've found your image, RIGHT click on it and choose properties.
3. Highlight the entire address (URL) of the image, then press Ctrl C on your keyboard to copy that address. Let's say the address of the image is www.geocities.com/basketball.gif.
4. Find the place on your web page that you want the image to go. While in edit mode, type in this image tag: <IMG SRC="Your Image Address" WIDTH="60" HEIGHT="30" > in that specific location. In the example above, you would type in <IMG SRC="http://www.geocities.com/basketball.gif">. You can specify width and height but it is not necessary. Now save. The image should now appear on your site.

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Video - Embed a Teachertube Video On Your Site...
1. Go to www.teachertube.com and find a video that you want to put on your site.
2. On the right side of the screen, scroll down until you see Embeddable Without Video Search. Click once in the box just to the right of it to highlight the text.
3. RIGHT click the highlighted text and choose copy.
4. Find the place on your web page that you want the video to go. While in edit mode, simply paste (Ctrl V) the code that you had copied in the previous step. The video should now appear on your site where you placed it.

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Widgets Widgets Widgets!!!
What is a widget? A website widget is an object that allows the user to interact with or view it. Examples of widgets are live video feeds, a search tool, an interactive calculator, a 3D image, and many more. Google has dozens of them and they are all free. In this example we will place a live video feed using Google gadgets. There are widgets all over the web. If you find one you like, placing them on your site is likely very similar to these steps.
1. Go to http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open and find Live TV channels and click the Add To Your Webpage button.
2. In the Gadget Settings beow the playing video, choose a channel that may interest you by selecting it from the Default Channel pop up meun.
3. After you've found a channel you like, for Autoplay, choose NO.
4. At the bottom of the screen, click the Get The Code button. The code you need will appear in a box at the bottom of the screen. Highlight all of the text that appears and copy it (RIGHT click, choose copy).
5. Find the place on your web page that you want the widget to go. While in edit mode, simply paste (Ctrl V) the code that you had copied in the previous step. The widget should now appear on your site where you placed it.

Other Website Widgets (get or create your own):
-SpringWidgets
-WidgetBox

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Music with Playlist.com - Place a music player on your site that plays a song or two when clicked...
1. You must first sign up for an account with playlist.com at www.playlist.com. Once you have done that, go to th next step.
2. Create a playlist. To do this: Click on My Playlists, then click Create a New Playlist. Give it a title, then click Submit.
3. Add song(s) you want to your playlist. To do this: Click Search for music, type in the song name and click search. Push the play button next to your song. If it it doesn't play, try this for another song. Once you've found a song that works, click the + icon next to the song. This will start the process of adding the song to your playist. Select your playlist and click Add Song to Playlist. Click Go to My Playlists. Find your play list and click directly on the name of it. Scroll down and click on Generate Code. Scroll down and click on Get the code for any other social network, blog or your own personal website. Click on your play list. Choose No for autostart and click the Get Code button. Highlight all the code that appears in the box, then copy it.
4. Find the place on your web page that you want the player to go. While in edit mode, simply paste (Ctrl V) the code that you had copied in the previous step. You should now take out some of the code. Below is a sample of what you'll see for the code:

REMOVE the portion of the code that is in red. Basically it is everything after border="0"/> and before the last <div> tag. Now that you are done, save your changes. You should now see the player on your website where you placed it.

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Podcasts - Create a Link to a Podcast...
Podcasts are basically on line radio shows or audio files that anyone can listen to. There are many great educational podcasts out there and they are easy to link to. These directions show you how to link to an existing podcast on the net. If you wish to create your own podcast, that can be done, but you may need additional help with that (contact Doug Abbas) or click HERE for more information about creating podcasts. To link to an EXISTING podcast, follow the steps below. I will be linking to a podcast found on the Educational Podcast Network. There are dozens of other sites with educational podcasts, this in only one of them.
1. Go to http://www.epnweb.org/ and click on a Subject Specific Podcast subject area. Click on any available podcast (you can search later for a good podcast but for now just choose one).
2. Highlight the entire web address in the address window and copy it.
3. Create a hyperlink to this podcast page by pasting the address using the hyperlink code as found above. Your code will look something like this: <a href="PASTE ADDRESS HERE /" target="_blank">CLICK HERE</a>
4. Save. If you want to RSS to a specific podcast, contact Doug Abbas. RSS will allow your site to show any new entries to a podcast of your choice.

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Subscribing to your site as a student or parent (ClassJump.com only)...
If students/parents subscribe to your site, they will get an e-mail every time you post a new assignment. They can also view assignment calendars and submit files to you.
1. Have student/parent go to your site.
2. They should click on Subscribe For Updates on the left side of screen.
3. They should enter their name and e-mail address and choose which classes to subscribe to, then click Sign Up. Parents/students will now get an e-mail automatically every time you enter a new assignment for a class.
Alternatively, you can sign up for your parents/students if you have their email addresses. You can view e-mail addresses by going into powerschool, click on the printer icon for any class, choose the report named E-mail Addresses, submit, then view it when it is completed. At that point you can copy/paste in e-mail addresses from here into ClassJump by following the steps above for each student/parent. When you get to step 3 simply paste in e-mail addresses.

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