Hello! My name is Todd Beuckens and I am a teacher based in Asia. I have been teaching ESL for over twenty years. I have taught in Japan, Taiwan, the U.S. and Thailand. I am currently teaching in Kyuushuu, Japan. I started elllo.org ten years ago and since then have started other sites for educational purposes.
I'm Shayna, originally from the U.S. but currently based in Brazil. I have a CELTA certificate and several years' experience teaching ESL both one-on-one and in groups. I'm also the founder of EspressoEnglish.net, which provides short, sweet online English lessons.10 Reasons Teachers Should Create Web Pages
One of the cornerstones of content presentation is readable text. As teachers, we love to give our students things to read. In the eyes of most teachers, learning is reading, or vice versa. Over the last thirty years, technology changes have constantly changed how we read. The printing press brought books, then the photocopier brought handouts, followed by the internet with web pages, blogs, and social media sites, and so on. Still, for the most part, teachers have not changed much over the last twenty years on how they create material. Most teachers still tend to create content via a word processor, such as Microsoft Word, and then print the content for offline viewing.
This approach is surely a viable and effective way to create and share content, but perhaps a more efficient, dynamic, and far-reaching method is to create web pages rather than word processing files. Let’s look at ten reasons teachers should start creating content as web pages:
1) Mobility
More than ever, students are glued to mobile devices. Content created as web pages make it easy for people to read text on the go and in virtually every location (with a virtual connection).
2) Cross-Platform
Web pages can be viewed on multiple devices with different operating systems. Be it Mac or PC, Linux or Windows, web pages are universally read on all devices. Furthermore, students do not need proprietary software to read digital versions.
3) Interactivity
Web pages allows content creators to add interactive elements that make content more lively and memorable. Pages can contain audio, video, quizzes, social media, polls, and images. Teachers can also add tracking elements such as Google analytics so they can get data on how often, where, when, and who views their material.
4) User Control
Built in browser features like dictionaries, search boxes, and book marking make content accessible by allowing students the ability to manage the content they consume. Similarly, students can change the font size of text to make it easier to read or have a auto-read read them the script if they are seeing-impaired.
5) Communal Consumption
By having content on the web, viewers outside of the initial target audience can access the material. A teacher might write a graded-reader story about the Olympics for students in China that a fellow instructor in Brazil might stubble upon via search engines and eventually use with in Rio de Janeiro. As a result, content creators not only fill their lesson needs, but the needs of others as well.
6) Printability
By using print css files, teachers can make content that is easy to print or save as a pdf and can look just as snazzy as any word processing document.
7) The Environment
While web pages can be printed, there is greater control of how much is printed. Teachers can offer the option to view content online and thus save paper. Also, by having a print option, teachers can delegate the responsibility of printing materials on the students, thus eliminating the annoying occurrence of wasting copies on no-shows, drop-outs, or disinterested students.
8) Hosting
Files can be hosted on multiple locations. A collection of lessons, readings, or quizzes can be stored in one file and hosted on the web, a closed-loop system, or a computer. Files can be stored on a private CMS like Blackboard or Moodle or on a public domain that is accessible to the world.
9) Transportability
Files can be easily shared via zip folders from one location to another. Unlike blogs which are hard to transfer, web pages are easy to send via e-mail, store on a personal computer, or host on multiple locations.
10) Amendability
Corrections and errors are easy to fix on Web pages unlike traditional printed material like textbooks and workbooks. If you find a mistake, it is easy to open a file, correct, reload it to a server, and make the correction in no time.
For those interested in making text as web pages, check out this free training course showing how to do it cheaply, quickly, and easily. If you can use a word processor, you can use make web pages.
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