Taught Elective: Website Publication

The decision to do this elective unit was an important one for me. I started it with an existing knowledge base in website authoring, as I already build and maintain websites* for clients and thus was able to apply my existing expertise to the task. However, there were some crucial gaps in my knowledge.

Firstly, I work on a PC and use MS FrontPage as my main web authoring package. Whilst this is an effective tool which I can now use efficiently, I willingly acknowledge that I needed to get to grips with Dreamweaver if I was to start building websites with any degree of complexity and sophistication.

Secondly, I sometimes rely on purchased templates for site-building - a quick and easy way to produce professional looking sites but not really forcing me to work from the ground up.

Thirdly, I have little working knowledge of Flash - something which appears more and more frequently on websites and a tool which I know I need to crack.

As an IT educator (see CV) I make use of the web all day every day for work and also rely heavily on it for personal purposes.

A significant part of my work involves the web - be it training novices in its use or employing search techniques to find source information. I consider myself to be a competent and discriminating surfer. What, then, did I stand to get out of an elective unit on website development?

Well there's always more to discover, and for me it was about maximising the potential of what I already knew by becoming more proficient in web authoring and publication.

Compared with professional web authors, with whom I have worked and at whom I have gawped in awe and wonder, I know nothing. That is to say, I know what I don't know, which is the most worrying state to be in.

I can see huge potential for my own professional development in this area and I know that I could become far better at it than I can claim to be at the moment.

Click here to see the journey I've made on this elective unit.

Click here to see an evaluation of a third party website.

* Some examples of websites I have authored:

Norwich & District Photographic Society

St Catherine's Church

Bryan McNerney

PriorITas Digital Arts