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Temple University Center for Research
in Human Development and Education |
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Instant Web Authoring
Literacy for Schools
131
by
Ames T. Brown III
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Traditional
web authoring (1996-2002) has required that teachers use
WYSIWYG
("what you see is what you get") web development software
installed on personal computers (e.g.,
Adobe GoLive or
Macromedia Dreamweaver)
to compose separate web files in
HTML
format. They then use the software-or the even more
traditional 1994-1997 technical process via a simple file
transfer protocol (FTP)
utility-to upload these files to the server. The time
necessary to teach web composition using WYSIWYG authoring
software is very short. It only takes two to three separate
2.5-hour workshops to bring teachers to a basic level of
competence. However, 5 to 7.5 hours-although only
encompassing one K-12 school day in students' lives-is a
great deal of time when considering district-level
professional development culture. In addition, the web
authoring software must be installed on each personal
computer in the school where teachers will be doing their
web development work. In contrast,
Content
Management System
(CMS) software only needs to be installed once on the
central web server computer, which allows anyone with a web
browser and password access to directly author content on
the website using his existing word-processing skills.
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Tim Berners-Lee
(the “inventor
of the web”
in 1990)
ealized the
inseparable link between both consuming and authoring web
content and incorporated the ability to do both in his
original browser/server model. However, the National Center
for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) left out the
editing/authoring capability in their official release of the Mosaic
web browser at the end of 1993. The Mosaic code eventually became Netscape/Mozilla. As society's adoption of
the Web began to grow exponentially in 1994, companies such as Opera and Microsoft released
free web browsing software that still used the approach of leaving out the
editing/authoring capability propagated by the original Mosaic model.
The World
Wide Web Consortium
(W3C) international standards group, under the
leadership of Berners-Lee, continuously maintained and updated (currently
version 7.x) the public Amaya code base
("W3C's Editor/Browser") in an effort to influence developers to
incorporate the hybrid approach in web browser software. After downloading and
installing Amaya (Win/Mac), it is
immediately clear that editing and browsing are seamlessly intertwined. Now it
seems that CMS technology is bringing the standard browser back to its original
hybrid intent, albeit in a fashion that is driven by the server rather than the
browser itself.
With the
start of the new millennium, a plethora of different CMS
software options emerged. The website
CMSwatch.com
tracks over 200 CMS related software products globally and maintains a
regularly updated list of 40 that they regard as "most significant."
Many released their software under Open
Source Initiative (OSI) guidelines, which means it is free. In 2002, the
major news networks began to cover a rapidly escalating personal CMS software
movement. This type of technology, referred to as "web
logging" software, quickly gave rise to the nickname
"blogging" (the last letter of we[b] + logging) or as a
"blogger" might say, "I just updated my blog." BlogComp tracks about 25 different forms
of blogging software and allows someone to select any 5 of these to compare
their attributes. A Canadian college instructor, George Siemens,
provides a comprehensive online introduction to blogging in The Art of
Blogging: Part
I and Part
II (Siemens, 2002, Dec. 1 and Dec. 6).
Web browser
authoring windows typical of CMS web servers provide easy
links such as "edit this page," "create new page," and
"upload file" in the browser to grant users authoring access
once they enter their passwords. A typical word-processing
toolbar is presented in the web browser allowing teachers to
use their existing, everyday word-processing skills to
directly author and immediately post content.
The city of
Delano in Kern County, California hosts a beautiful
CMS-based site for the Delano High School (see
http://community.kern.org/DHS ). The server runs on
Frontier/Manilla server software developed by Userland
Software. As is characteristic of CMS websites for any type
of organization, it has up-to-date content. Whereas a
traditional school website might be maintained by one
technology staff member who has difficulty determining what
new information should be developed and posted in a timely
fashion, a CMS school website has direct authoring
capabilities for different content sections or types of
information by teachers, administrators, and other staff.
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