Reflections+on+assignments+in+EDLD+5365+Web+Design

I have noticed that a great deal of our Instructional Technologist’s duties at our school involve governing the campus web page. This course was very important to me because it taught us best practices on how to develop standards of operation for our website; EDLD 5365 taught us how to set up procedures for a collaborative electronic environment; and how to concentrate our implementation of procedures on the usability of our site. First of all, the class was made aware of a very importanttool such as Drupal, which is an open-source content management system that provides WYSIWYG system to administer electronic content; I have continued to use Drupal ever since. I took this course with great interest, based on my prior experience with basic html programming. Indeed, this course taught me about project management, site administration, and data architecture to design web-based environments. On week 1 we were exposed to the very interesting area of web policy elaboration for a school environment. I have seen documentation generated by the CIT at my school and have found this experience invaluable. On week 2 we had to generate a Project Charter and High-Level Plan for our campus. Our campus aims to foster a responsible application and integration of instructional technology. The purpose of the project charter is to provide the foundation for the preparation, construction and continuance of a campus website. Through the maximization of technoloy applications, world wide web for our school shouldl smooth the progress of communication between our school and the community we serve, given auser-friendly environment. On week 3 we had to create a web site inventory of all pages and files available for our website, to publish the information using a spreadsheet, and to validate the resulting web page. This activity taught me how webmasters graphically organize all content available to them and how to assign different values to them given their location, file size, file type, and identification number. On week 4 we had to upload content to our Drupal-powered website and to generate a document about management procedures to upload web material. I learned that a Management Procedures manual isextremely important for any webmaster as this document tells him or her what goes where and how to upload it. Finally, on week 5, we had to make hypothetical recommendations to the web provider for our site, including requests for new services, improved service levels, and vehicles of professional development for teachers and parents. Based on the weekly discussions, I did realize that many of the teachers who took this course seemed to have great difficulty mastering Drupal, and that some of the problems involved the initial setup of the New School Spaces website. Even with my prior experience designing web pages using Hypertext Markup Language coding it took me a while to become familiarized with this new program; however, I tried to encourage others by explaining that the WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) nature of this software makes Drupal a very logical application and as a result it makes it possible to sysstematically analyze steps backward and instantly test every conceivable variable without rewriting the entire script. Beyond that, I did not see situations where anybody exercised power, influence or authority to affect the course of the instruction. The only question I would have for an expert would be whether it is typical or not to utilize resources such as Drupal in a District environment and whether it is encouraged or discouraged to introduce this knowledge from a professional perspective. The only topic that baffles me is, given the speed at which technology renews itself, how much longer will open source content management software will be en vogue before new, more user-friendly technology comes along and replaces it.