Assignment 3 - Website Creation
LIBE 645 - Professor Cho
Maria Victoria Lou
Website - Hudson Road Elementary Library (http://hudsonroadmocklibrary.weebly.com/)
Final Reflection
Planning Stage - I initially wanted to delve right into creating
the site without a plan, to be quite honest!
However, that didn't go over very well - as I ended up spending too much
time thinking of what my next step would be.
The easiest part of this whole thing was that, through this course, I
have seen enough versions of library websites to have a general idea on how I'm
going to layout mine. Below was my
preliminary site taxonomy sketch, which I envisioned my site would follow.
I then looked into what our
district supports, as far as online programs for creating a website is
concerned. I went this route because, if
in case I ended up liking what I've created in the end, I might actually
propose the site to our Principal/TL to be approved and maintained OR create my
own personal website using the same program.
As it turned out, the teachers in our district who currently have a
website made using Outlook are being encouraged to re-create them on
Weebly. I immediately signed-up and
experimented with Weebly one late afternoon, and by the next morning, I had all
the basic components of my site all in place!
Weebly is an incredibly easy web creator to use. It had several very chic and
professional-looking themes, lots of formatting options and features (i.e.,
map, slideshow, contact form), and it's FREE!
Theme - Like I mentioned earlier, designing your site on Weebly is
fairly straightforward. But still, it
was not without its hiccups! I initially
chose a whimsical and colorful theme, which I thought was a good fit for an
elementary school. However, its template
only allowed for four tabs on the menu bar, and all others will be categorized
under one tab labeled "More".
I didn't really like this because I want all my main tabs to be visible
to the user. My next (and final) choice
was a more elegant-looking theme, and one that reminds me of a quiet reading
area in one of our local libraries here, with the three lights on top of a long
wooden bench. This particular theme had
all the major features that I like, including the font styles, image
positioning options, and the background color (I just love brown!). I chose gray for majority of my font color,
instead of the standard black, because it gives out a softer feel to
reading. I chose different colors to
emphasize titles and main terms within paragraphs of text, except for green
because that is the color of all my links.
A couple of this theme's limitations included the letter "L"
looking like a lower case instead of an upper case on my title
("library") because of the font style, and that it doesn't keep the
text formatting when I copy/paste between pages (I had to re-format
everything).
Pages - Once I started adding pages to my site, I knew right away I
had to draw-up a new taxonomy. First of
all, I wanted to change "Welcome" to "Home" because I don't
really plan to have a welcome message on my "Welcome" page, and
"Home" is the standard term for most sites' opening page. Secondly, I initially planned to have the
contact information (address, phone, map) on the Home page, but after having
discovered the Contact Form feature of Weebly, I decided to have them on a
separate page. I also realized during my
initial planning stage that the items I was going to include in the
"Students" and "Teachers" pages on my original taxonomy
were too many and too redundant. I then
thought hard on what I could use to replace these two tabs (see below for the
rationale behind my choosing "Reading Strategies" and "Research
Tools"). Finally, I got rid of the
Parents' tab because I figured that they will pick from the site themselves the
components that they need, without me having to have them all available under one
tab. Overall, I have to be very
"picky" on what I choose to make into main tabs/pages because Weebly
only allows for 4-6 on the menu bar. All
the other pages that I have on my site provide supplementary information, so I
have them set-up as sub-links (i.e., book exchange schedule, updates,
catalogue). The images I chose for my
site were at a minimum because I don't want to simply litter it with random
clipart images and pictures for "cuteness" purposes. Instead, I chose to use pictures that relate
to the page they are on, and I used mostly pictures of real students/places
with the exception of website links and those ones on my Homepage. The final format of my website taxonomy
follows a flat hierarchy - wherein I have my 6 main headers (on the menu bar)
and everything else are just your sub-components (i.e., updates, mission
statements, policies, book exchange scheduleds, etc.). All information can be accessed using a 1-2
clicks, and (almost) each page look identical to each other. The navigation bar appears on every page, and
all clickable text are green in color.
Home Page - I wanted my Home Page to not be cluttered with images
and links, which often leave them confused and unsure on what to click
first. Instead, I have EVERYTHING I've
covered on my site (from staff info, resources, reading/research strategies to
library updates, catalogue, library updates) accessible to the user right from
the Homepage, but in an organized fashion with all the related information
grouped into separate links.
Staff Page - I thought it was important for me to tell the readers
more in-depth information about their TLs than simply stating our names on the
page. Since we don't have our own
classrooms, we very rarely have the chance to have conversations with the students
at our school in a more personal level.
Resources - This page took quite a bit of time to complete, given
all the images and links I had to upload and set-up. Under "Print Materials", I included
three sub-links and had to set-up separate pages for those as well. Choosing the online databases and online
sites for E-books was pretty easy because this course has exposed me to many
examples. One important discovery I had in
setting up this page was my finding an online database on award winning books. It's an extremely exhaustive database, which
even allows you to search for award winning books from various countries! Lastly, I had the most fun collecting entries
for the "Student Recommended Books" page because the students I
interviewed had the most interesting things to say, and they were very excited
to be asked about their favorite books.
Before I finalized this page, I made sure that all the links work!
Reading Strategies - Although not a common part of a library
website, I think it makes sense for a TL to provide some information on reading
strategies to its site users. The two
sites I used as reference provide a more in-depth look at this topic, which
teachers at the primary and intermediate levels will find incredibly useful in
their teaching.
Research Tools - Apart from providing site users with useful online
database links, I decided to add a blurb on the importance of reading and
understanding informational text. I
found that as classroom teacher and previous TL, students often struggle with
reading and decoding non-fiction materials.
I'm hoping that the teachers who visit this part of the site will first
go over the strategies I have laid-out on the page with their students before
delving into the different online sites.
Contact Us - I like this part of the site because it's very
multifunctional. I like how site users
can use this form to make comments about the site or the components of the
library itself. It can also be used to
make book recommendations, etc. as there never seems to be enough time to chat
with their TL on the books they recently read.
Challenges/Moving Forward - Overall,
I was pleased with how my site turned out after everything was set in
place. I would have liked to include
video clips, blogs, and pathfinders on my site, but all these take time to put
together. As well, I didn't include a Search
field because it costs money to do so. I
also want to look more into the policy behind using clipart on one's site
because I know some images have a royalty fee or copyrights attached to
them. Creating this website required a
lot of time, but the whole process - from gathering of information to designing
and revising the site - has been a truly valuable one. I've decided to propose this site to our
Principal and our TL, and hopefully they will approve it and take the time to
maintain it and keep the links/information updated.
