Thursday, August 20, 2009

Static vs. Dynamic websites

Websites were the main reason to get involved with the World Wide Web many years ago. If you wanted to promote your business or find out any information you tried to find the right website. If you were a techno-wizard and could create such an entity you built it and they would come, with little more to do than the occasional update. With the advent of powerful search engines, blogs, aggregators and YouTube there are and increasing number of media and software innovations that need to be incorporated to make a website dynamic. Constant change is needed to present an explosion in user-friendly devices.

A description of the nature and the problems of dynamic websites is ”most large websites are tree-structured, which though not perfect, offers a simple mechanism to organize considerable amounts of information. These information spaces tend to be large, and are hardly ever completely navigated by a single user. Rather, users tend to navigate over a reduced subset of web pages, which are related to their interests.” Lyardet (1998)

These progressions in technology can be reflected in the learning level of the students. P-3 students use photo story to demonstrate a range of outcomes but Years 4-7 might use PowerPoint, Slideshare and Voicethread to make increasingly sophisticated presentations. A student’s viewing; utilisation and construction of a website might also start with the simplistic versions then moving into more complex construction.

In the following YouTube video “Beginners! Create a website here” Lisa takes you through the simplest steps to creating a static website. What I like about this video is the fact is it is face to camera whereas most other professionals show nothing but software screen. Lisa also mentions getting a domain name which I have not heard about from many other presentations. Lisa then moves through all the steps for a static website. I could use this as a stimulus to for critical analysis of her presentation style as opposed to another presenter in an English public speaking unit.

Lyardet, F. & Rossi, G. (1998) Patterns for Dynamic Websites LIFIA, Fac. De Ciencias Exactas, UNLP, Argentina Retrieved August 20 2009 from http://reference.kfupm.edu.sa/

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