Several 4th and 5th graders at a local elementary school got to experience writing their own web sites in HTML this fall at a voluntary enrichment class held after school hours. “It was really fun to watch their faces as a page of code turned into a functioning web site before their eyes!” recalled Kim Dailey, webmaster at Papyrus Document & Design, LLC, who volunteered to teach the four session course to thirteen students. “The goal was for them to have a positive experience with code, a better understanding of how web sites are made, and perhaps spark an interest in pursuing web design or programming as a hobby or profession.”
The students each had access to a netbook, already owned by the school; and USB drives, graciously provided by the PTO organization that organizes the enrichment classes. Dailey arranged the curriculum, provided handouts, and instructed the course.
“I provided the students with three blank html pages and some clip art to start with, ” said Dailey. “In class, they wrote a very short story and linked all the pages. Then we added graphics, backgrounds, color, font styling, and finally embedded video, audio and animation into their pages.” At the end of the class series, interested students were allowed to take their pages home to continue to experiment, if they so desired. The students were encouraged to utilize the great learning resources of http://www.w3schools.com/ to explore html and css further.
“It was a really fun experience to share my passion with the youth,” said Dailey.
Copy of the handouts used in the class.
For more information on how the class was designed, feel free to contact Kim Dailey.