Expression Web Project For Students

[Updated with new project page link.] 

When I was a student a lot of projects we used to do were poster projects. From what I see in my wife's classroom poster projects are still very common. They are a fun way for students to organize and present the results of their research efforts. They are more hands on and they allow students to use their creativity.

But you know this is a web 2.0 world. The posters of the 21st century are web pages. They are interactive, multi-page and even multi-media. Of course not everyone is up to creating these poster 2.0 projects without a little help. And of course without the right tools.

Expression Web is a new software product for developing web pages. It's designed to make things easier to do. To several of us it seems as though combining a web development tool and the idea of a poster project was a natural development. So an Expression Web tutorial and a curriculum unit was created and field tested with 10 U.S. schools:  7 high schools (14-18 year old students) and 3 middle schools (11-14 year old students.)  The tutorial was created by Pat Phillips (a nationally recognized computer science educator,) as a stand-alone curriculum designed for non-technical beginners.  This project can be used in pretty much any subject/course that has room for another project with a teacher who wants to add a web project or perhaps to get students interested in learning more about computer science.

The idea is that a web page (actually several connected pages) are created to display and support the information from a small research project. This curriculum unit is available for free at the Faculty Connection web site. For more information visit the Expression Web for High School page.

This is the project that was announced at TCEA last week BTW.