Orientation: Web Publishing Software

STEP ONE: OPTIONS. Most students begin the class never having published a webpage before. If that is the case, don't worry: almost everyone is surprised to find out how easy it is to publish webpages. I am going to recommend that you use GoogleSites to publish your website. If you want to use Composer or some other software, you can choose to do that, but please read the information below before you make final choice.

About GoogleSites. GoogleSites is a service offered by Google which allows you to create and publish webpages using your web browser. That means you do not have to download and install any software to create your Google Site, and it also means that you can do your work from any computer with a web browser (including computers in computer labs, Internet cafes, etc.). The webpages you create with Google Sites are published in webspace that is provided to you for free by Google. Here are some examples of Storybooks students have created using GoogleSites: GoogleSite Storybooks links.

Composer and OU webspace. In the past, I recommended that people use Composer and publish their websites in their OU webspace, students.ou.edu. Unfortunately, this is no longer an option. OU is going to delete all the content on students.ou.edu in 2011 (this is a real tragedy for my classes: IT deleted hundreds of student projects this summer, and they will finish deleting all the projects completely in 2011). With the new portfolio.ou.edu system (the replacement for students.ou.edu), OU will be automatically deleting student websites upon graduation, the same way that they delete your email when you graduate. Unfortunately, portfolio.ou.edu, is not a web publishing system; it is a document sharing system. You cannot use the same "publish" feature in Composer as before, and you cannot access your webspace by FTP anymore. I am unable to provide technical support for this new system, so you will need to contact IT if you do want to try to publish your website for this class in your new portfolio.ou.edu webspace.

Other software. If you already know how to publish webpages with some other kind of software (such as Dreamweaver), that is great; you are certainly not required to use Google Sites. Please feel free to use the web publishing software that you are most familiar with! My only requirement is that the website you produce does not display advertising.

STEP TWO: CHOOSE. So that you will be ready to start publishing next week, you need to decide what your strategy will be as you do the web publishing assignments for this class. Please send me an email in which you choose one of these options:

• Choosing Google Sites now. If you are going to use GoogleSites, that is the easiest option; you do not need to do anything special this week - the Week 2 Internet assignment will give you all the instructions you need. Just send me an email to let me know that you will be using the GoogleSites option for the web publishing assignments that start in Week 2.
• Choosing OU webspace. If you are going to use Composer with the new OU webspace system, please log on to portfolio.ou.edu and publish a test webpage to make sure the new system is working for you. Send me the address of your test webpage in the email.
• Choosing OTHER software. If you are going to use another option, please let me know what software you will be using and send me a link to a webpage you have published using that software. 

Make sure you use this subject line for the email: Week 1: Software Options. Also, if you have any questions related to the web publishing assignments, please feel free to ask!

When you have sent in the email, you can do the Gradebook Declaration. Here is the text of the Gradebook Declaration you will complete: