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June 1, 2001
Building a Culture around Your Web Site
By Stephen Valentine
Even if you hand high school students a syllabus and write each week's expectations on the board, chances are that many of them will find out on the fly what books and assignments they need for your class.
This doesn't change just because you post your syllabus on a Web site and tell kids to check it. In fact, many students have told me that this only makes their lives more difficult because they have to find a computer and log on to the network in order to check your site. Web sites don't necessarily help students help themselves.
But they can.
One of the wisest things I have ever heard about the teacher's mission came from Russell Weatherspoon, a vibrant and distinguished member of Exeter Academy's faculty: "I am trying to play my way into kids' lives." The spirit of play, particularly as it manifests itself in laughter, acts as a fundamental bridge between generations.
The Introduction to the Cluetrain Manifesto, a book that has been called irreverent, witty, and also the "future of business," says it in a slightly different but no less effective way: the new conversations that are taking place online "are spawning new perspectives, new tools, and a new kind of intellectual bravery more comfortable with risk than with regulation. The result is not just new things learned but a vastly enhanced ability to learn things. And the pace of this learning is accelerating. In the networked marketplace it is reflected in the joy of play. On company intranets it is reflected in the joy of knowledge. But it's getting difficult to tell the two apart" (Cluetrain, xxxii).
At best, your class Web site will combine the joy of play with the joy of knowledge. It will be a combination of what is human in your classroom with what is applicable to the daily functions of your curriculum. In other words, you have to build a culture around your Web site. And the culture of your Web site begins with the culture of your classroom.
Take a look around the Web or in your e-mail inbox and you'll see a range of voices as various, as intricate, as patently individual as fingerprints. The best of these Web sites and messages hold one thing in common: their authors have found a way to play their way into the lives of anyone who decides to click through.
When Gray Smith and I arrived at our new school this past September, we wanted to learn how to make great Web sites to use in our daily curriculum. Almost immediately we realized that we could draw students into our learning process and therefore into our Web sites. The main attraction was simple: who could build a better Web site, Mr. Smith or Mr. Valentine?
At first our homepages were almost identical. We wrote our names across the top and then listed relevant links below them. Anytime we needed to add something new, we simply added to the list. The result was a very long vertical list in 12 point, Times New Roman font. The kids were not impressed-or paying attention.
One day, while leafing through one of William Blake's illuminated manuscripts, I was reminded of one of my favorite images: Blake's "Ancient of Days." Eureka!, I thought. Here was an image that conveyed a message; it was the perfect way to "one-up" Mr. Smith. I quickly learned how to import pictures to my homepage. When my students saw the picture, they picked up on the message right away: "Mr. Valentine's Web site is godlike compared to Mr. Smith's." Bolstered by the outcry from his students, who were, at this point, visiting each page on a regular basis to see who had one-upped the other, Mr. Smith soon answered back.
A former college lacrosse player at the University of Delaware, Mr. Smith imported a cartoon of Delaware's Mascot, a fighting blue hen, wielding a lacrosse stick. Importing had been done, of course, but he added an extra twist. The cartoon was hyperlinked to the University of Delaware's Athletics homepage. This marked the first time in our mock-feud that an image rather than words had served as the gateway to a new source of information.
Confronted by my students, I had to answer back-quickly. I put a picture of a Ninja warrior on my homepage (another symbol of my and Mr. Smith's competition) and did some research. I wanted to make the image move. With dynamic html effects, this was one of the easiest adjustments I had made to my Web site. When students clicked the image, it flew off the page. Many of my more computer-literate students thought this was "corny," but they couldn't argue with the fact that it allowed them to "play" with my Web site. They weren't just going there to get an assignment. They were going there to "click the Ninja."
Mr. Smith responded with a samurai and some html effects of his own. And by now, you're getting the picture-a culture had been born!
Today I walked in feeling proud of my latest accomplishment: frames. A few of my students poked fun at me. "Mr. Valentine, frames are easy to make." Was this a setback? Heck no! It was a victory. I hadn't asked my students to check the Web site or give me feedback. They had checked it on their own. As I write this I imagine that Mr. Smith's students are razzing him to no end. Although frames are simple, he doesn't have them yet.
Needless to say, Gray Smith and I have had a good time with our mock feud, and we've learned quite a bit about building Web sites in the process. But the best part about this whole thing is that the kids are checking our sites all the time-which means they're only a click away from their class syllabus, their guidelines for revision, and a whole host of other links that will help them help themselves.
Feel free to check out my Web site and Gray Smith's Web site to stay tuned to their continuing evolution.
Email: Stephen Valentine
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