[James Brennan]

20/09/2016 at 3:34 pm

Hi everyone,

Pleased to meet you all. Hoping someone might be able to offer a bit of advice here!

I’m a probationer based in West Lothian and I am currently in a department by myself at the moment. I have recently started the Climate Change ISDD unit assessment with my Higher class and have just realised (!) that the guidelines recommend to use a web authoring package.

The main issue is that I only seem to have access to BlueGriffon and OpenElement on the systems here, none of which I had any experience with before. I had a look at Charlie Love’s excellent exemplar solution in the files section here, which has been very helpful in providing an idea of what exactly my pupils should be aiming for.

The real stumbling blocks I’m finding relate to the implementation of a multi-level navigation bar and also the search facility. I’ve had a play about with both programs and haven’t been able to pull this off so far. Web design has never been my forte either, which doesn’t help!

Would really appreciate some gentle guidance here if anyone is able to assist as my Higher class are brilliant and I really don’t want to let them down.

Kind regards,

James

[brendanm]

20/09/2016 at 8:51 pm

Hi James,

w3schools has some good reference materials and tutorials.

Here is a link to using css to create drop down manus including navigation

Hope this helps.

Hope you are not on your own too long!

I’m at St Kent’s in Blackburn WL. Give me a shout if you’re looking for support.

Best,

Brendan

[brendanm]

20/09/2016 at 8:52 pm

Hi James,

w3schools has some good reference materials and tutorials.

Here is a link to using css to create drop down menus including navigation

Hope this helps.

Hope you are not on your own too long!

I’m at St Kent’s in Blackburn WL. Give me a shout if you’re looking for support.

Best,

Brendan

[James Brennan]

20/11/2016 at 7:47 pm

Apologies for not getting back to this sooner but I wanted to thank you for that suggestion Brendan!

Between this and a later discovery made through the school’s technician (it actually transpired that we had unused licenses for Serif WebPlus X8 all along!), most of my Higher students have managed to put together a website that meets the specification.

So thanks again for that, absolute lifesaver. At the moment it’s just a case of trying to survive the year more than anything else, and every little helps! 🙂

 

[Andrew Douglas]

31/01/2017 at 2:23 pm

Hi James,

I wondered if I could pick your brains a little about the ISDD Higher Climate Change project. I am also teaching higher for the first time this year and plan to use Serif Webplus for this project.

In Task 2, pupils are asked to add ”HTML or Javascript to embed a link to an external video clip on one or more pages, and a button which links to an external contact”. Were you able to do this using webplus? Webplus seems to have buttons that can be clicked and dragged and remove the need to program something out in HTML or Javascript.

Any help/ advice would be great thanks,

[John Schofield]

31/01/2017 at 2:58 pm

Hi Andrew

we use Serif WebPlus and for the HTML/javascript coding we insert ‘HTML fragments’. This allows us to insert the small amounts of HTML code as suggested by the arrangement documents.

In serif select the ‘Insert menu’ then ‘HTML fragment’. This puts a section of HTML onto that page. Buttons can be made simply using JavaScript, and again as suggested, this merely shows a phone number or something similar when clicked.

Let me know if this doesn’t work

kind regards

 

[aburness]

01/02/2017 at 11:02 am

Hi everyone,

I am currently doing a long term supply role teaching Computing at S1 & S3 level (as well as Business, Administration and many PSE classes) at Charleston Academy in Inverness.

As many of you know, there are few schools in the Highlands that teach Computer Science, too many council cuts and I guess some don’t think Computing is a ‘key subject’ these days!!! Strange where England is going the other way!

I’m a qualified Computing teacher hoping to find work in Inverness city and am keen to get as many pupils interested in Computer Science here while I am here, even if it’s for a non official course.

Anyway, on the Web Authoring topic having just started in January I am teaching my S1 class HTML & CSS at the moment using Notepad ++.

I’d like to move onto a Web Authoring package, I liked MS Frontpage 2003 which I thought was great for S1 classes or Dreamweaver (at International Schools they could afford all that).

However there is Serif WebPlus X7 on the machines here, although it doesn’t look easy to use at first glance.

Does anyone have any resources on this? I have searched the internet for school type resources, it looks very different to anything I have used before and can’t find anything that fits an S1 class (or even S3 later on).

Any help with resources would be greatly appreciated.

I am settling back into the State Sector after working many years in the International School scene, one of the benefits of the International Schools is I’m used to just asking for software, no matter the cost, and it would be installed the following week. Here it is obviously different and it is taking some getting used to.

Anyway, thought I’d ask.

Kind regards,
Alan Burness

[aburness]

01/02/2017 at 11:06 am

…one more thing, I’ve heard that councils and schools can be against online sites like Weebly as they require personal pupil registration. Is there any that do not require such things?

[Marc McWhirter]

01/02/2017 at 11:15 am

@aburness

Hi Alan, there are a really good group of Computing teachers in Highland. You should touch base with Darren Brown at Inverness High School if you haven’t already. As for Serif, I can’t help, but Weebly allows teachers to register for education accounts to provide students with access to Weebly without them having to register.  https://education.weebly.com/

[Andrew Douglas]

06/02/2017 at 7:22 pm

Thanks  John,

A great help thank you.

[Andrew Douglas]

06/02/2017 at 7:23 pm

Thanks  John,

A great help, thank you

[Andrew Douglas]

06/02/2017 at 7:23 pm

Thanks John,

A great help, thank you

[James Brennan]

06/02/2017 at 9:25 pm

Hi Andrew,

I just wanted to chime in and say that John’s answer is spot on. I advised my students to use a HTML fragment for inserting the search bar as the Serif WebPlus internal search wasn’t working well for some.

As for resources, I don’t have any but Serif WebPlus X8 has a start up assistant that links to some online tutorials that may be of use.

Here is an example.

Hope this helps!

[Erik Stevenson]

17/02/2017 at 9:37 am

Greg Reid (http://www.compednet.com/members/snegreid/) used to share some really good Serif resources (including web design) that I used with my pupils to great effect in the past (don’t want to share them without his permission).