Website
The
tasks of the "Animated Debate" project website
The "Animated Debate" project website fulfilled a few functions.
First of all, it was the popularizing and documental role - to promote
the project, its ideas and institutions performing it. Its task has
been to spread the effects and methods of working. It is the record
of subsequent phases of all produced animations. One more very important
function, fulfilled by the website of the project is to motivate
the workshop participants to work. On the website there are all essential
work results, the subsequent stages of produced animations, as well
as all supportive and trial materials. The young authors enjoyed
a lot that their works are available in the Internet, that they can
be proud with their work at home or school, that they could say they
are "in the Internet". This specific ennoblement and privilege made
the workshop participants more motivated to work, especially at the
moments when the next phases of a task production appeared on the
website.
The next task resulted from the assumption of the project itself
- the website was the place of "animated debate" between the participants.
Here all the work results occurred and the workshop participants
in all countries could au courant discuss and comment them.
A special users' forum was devoted for these comments and up-to-date
information exchange. On an Internet forum the messages which are
sent are immediately published. The user who launches the forum can
have a preview of all general subjects and raised threads. Every
Internet forum consists of a few imposed subjects (so called "discussion
panel") and there are threads freely-developed by the users. The
discussion takes place in the real time, that means that the answers
(called "posts") which are sent onto the forum, appear there immediately
and they can be read by all the current users. The discussion is
usually moderated; one of the users has a technically possibility
to edit the posts, remove them, and even close the threads. This
interference is necessary to avoid littering the forum with vulgar
posts, and ones not to the point or offending the users. Because
the idea of each forum is an orderly information, coming from many
sources. In the Internet there are thousands thematic forums concerning
such varied issues as motorization, computing, medicine, and collecting.
In our case, the additional protection was to guard the forum with
a password; only authorized people could become familiar with the
content; to take part in a discussion one had to register. The aim
of these restrictions was first of all to provide safety for the
children who published their e-mail addresses and photos.
The forum of our project was divided into two panels - the instructors'
and the users' panel. On the first panel, the makers of the project
discussed the current tasks production (the panel was divided into
a few most important topics). On the users" panel there was a debate
conducted on the next stages of work, as well as the opinion exchange
about the work projects published on the website. This panel allowed
also the young users to make contacts with partners working in different
countries as well as to introduce themselves and discuss about their
interests. Forum functioning in this panel was to fulfill two fundamental
tasks - to make the workshop participants stop being anonymous to
each other, because it allowed to show a photo or say a couple of
words about their work. The groups who worked with each other could,
despite the distance, see each other and talk. In the users' panel
the discussion about the next work phases was to be conducted.
Despite the good beginning, the Internet forum ceased to fulfill
its function with time and in the second year, it was decided to
stop running it. There are a few reasons of it. The young workshop
participants were too early asked to use the forum. For people,
who have just began their adventure with a computer, an Internet
forum may be too complicated tool. They were more eager to use
e-mail. At the same time, it turned out that the discussion on
the open forum is not attractive for all young people from every
country. It was very well visible especially with the British group,
who practically speaking, did not take part in discussions. Also
among the instructors, not everybody proved diligent in using the
forum. And here also, e-mail was much more popular.
Website creating
Creating websites involves among other things the necessity to purchase
a name and space on some of the commercial companies which specialize
in web pages service. In every country there are also companies which
offer free service, but then most often one has to accept commercials,
appearing on the websites, and one does not have the possibility
to influence on their form, content, and the moment of occurring.
When we launch a school Internet page or any page children would
use, commercial surprises such as the promotion of erotic pages can
turn out to be quite nasty. That is why, we suggest purchasing space
on the commercial server (the costs are about 30 - 50 Euros a year).
Then we can gain first of all the considerable amount of space, which
can be useful when developing the website, and the page which would
always work. Also, we will not be forced to have any kind of advertisement.
Purchasing the commercial server, we also receive at least one e-mail
address included. Buying one's own e-mail address - a domain costs
about 50 Euros. But it is worth thinking about, because the address
which can be recognized easily, is one of the pillars of our website
success.
More and more school, teachers, and even students, have their web
pages. They usually serve to promote some particular event - school
association's achievements, the documentation of school and its students'
output, or the promotion of the school itself, for example among
future potential students.
More and more people look for information in the Internet as the
first place. So the first action of people who seek, for instance,
the computer animation projects, would be typing the expression "computer
animation at school" into a search engine. And then, there appears
on their screens a list of found website addresses. And here, most
of the Internet users finish their search, supposing that if something
does not exits in the Internet, it does not exist at all..
Creating a web page is, in spite of what it may appear to be , not
a difficult task. Web pages are first of all the source of information,
and later only the source of entertainment. They also serve as educational
aid. If we want to create a legible, attractive web page, which would
inform about some school event or achievements, we have to follow
some rules and valid principles. If we do not have experience in
this field, it is better to entrust a webmaster, a professional,
with creating our website. They will make for us a page exactly like
we want it, and without any technical errors. The Internet is full
of not very well thought-out pages which contain plenty of unnecessary
information, made in slovenly fashion, whose form and chaos divert
attention from its purpose.
A moment of planning will allow to avoid these mistakes and to create
a web page which will fulfill its role. In the plan, it is important
to answer such questions:
What will our web page contain? (here we should build the structure
going from the most general information to the most detailed)
Who is the web site addressed to, who should use it? (but we must
remember that our website will not be reserved only for, for example,
art teachers. Anybody can get to our website while searching information,
so presented content should not be too hermetic.
What particular pages will contain, what we want them to contain
- what kind of texts, what kind of graphics, in what proportions,
etc (here we should reflect, the content planned in every detail
is surely needed).
We should consult such outlined and described plan with a webmaster,
for who our plan is the most essential hint.
If we decide to make a web page on our own, it is good to use specialist
literature or on-line guides; there are many of them in the Internet.
