The page construction is finally starting to make dome sense. Some of the details on how to change colors and fonts will be handled later. The five pages of the website are set up and the information just needs to be created and added to the pages. I will ask teachers and others at school for their "top picks" for this genre.

I have noticed typos and will need to go back and carefully reread each entry. I am starting to think about the design and colors. I will look carefully at the photos of downtown Philly and Valley Forge Park to see if they can be used in any way. Some of the city shots include parts of cars and signs but can probably be fixed or cropped in Photoshop.

I am not sure about the logo concept. I would love to use a picture of old city or huts at the park.

Gathering resources

I am busy putting together the books that I will review for the web page. I have divided the books into geographic groups - Philadelphia, Gettysburg, upstate PA, New Jersey. I am also gathering websites of the parks, battlefields, and historic areas that are within a day's drive from Philadelphia. These areas support the novels and bring to life the history and settings of the novels. I am also working on a definition of the genre. All I need is to sort out how to place the information on the web pages and get them uploaded. I took some pictures at Valley Forge Park and will see how they look.

Saturday's progress

Well-made it through loading Dreamweaver at home. I still have trouble with some of the concepts of how to work with the program. Managed to do the "about" page. I started to work on the links page and realized that I am not quite sure how to code it and will find someone to consult. I have websites which take the user to the various parks and historic sites in the greater Philadelphia area. They include Trenton and probably Wilmington. I am thinking about taking a digital picture at Valley Forge Park for the logo. With the fall season, the park shows off the leaves, cannons, and huts as well as the landscape. Some of the novels take place adjacent to the park and in downtown Philadelphia. I'll think about pictures near Independence Hall since I will be there tomorrow morning. Once I have a suitable picture I can play with the colors for the heading and navigation bar backgrounds.

Rethinking

Imay have to rethink how I structure the website. Resources are not falling into place as easily as I predicted. It is still a reasonable project topic but I may have to distinguish between local historical novels and "others".

Refining the topic

There are many historical novels written at an appropriate level for middle school students that are centered around places within one day driving from Philadelphia. I think that I will use novels that take place in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, and Delaware as a line to limit the scope of the available novels.

The home page will probably consist of a definition of what makes a novel fit into this particular genre. The next page will have reviews of novels that I recommend and I will write the reviews/annotations. The next page will have a listing of other choices with reviews from other sources. A page will have a listing of places to visit for the day that relate to novels with hopefully links to their websites.

I am considering other possibilities.

Ruling out some topics

I initially thought about some topics that would require me to immerse myself in the topic before I could competently create the website. As I wrote, I ruled out focusing on research methods. I considered building the site around the genre of fantasy. I do not particularly enjoy reading fantasy novels and have not read many of the books in the middle school collection. I figured this choice would force me to read the popular fantasy series that I check out to the students. Then I realized that, as with the research tools, I would be making this assignment even tougher. Many of the students prefer realistic fiction. There are some excellent novels by Joan Bauer that are quality works. Other realistic fiction series appeal to the girls but are not part of our library collection. I settled on historical fiction as the topic and will think about how to structure the website pages to appeal to middle school students.

A topic with options

While trying to decide on a topic for the final website I considered what would be a useful tool for me to create that I could use again in a future professional situation. Since I hope to be working as a library media specialist in the near future, I decided that a website for middle school students would be a reasonable direction to go.

My first thoughts were to create a site that would detail the research process including resources and techniques for finding information in different kinds of library materials. While I have a sense of what I would have included, I began to realize that the process was not clearly established in my head and that I would be trying to create a sensible sequence for research while tacking the process of creating the actual site.

So, I decided to rethink the choice.