Tech Directions - December 2008 - (Page 24)

Mooresville Middle School Snags Web Site of the Month HIS has been a big year for Kim Kulawik, a technology education teacher at Mooresville (NC) Middle School: He has been named a 2008 North Carolina Technology Student Association Advisor of the Year, a 2008 International Technology Association Teacher of the Year—and now he and his students are receiving the December 2008 Tech Directions Web Site of the Month award! A visit to www1.mgsd. k12.nc.us/mmstechnologyeducation/ will show you why. The site features classroom activities, course guidelines, grading procedures, a featured student of the month, an online tour of the technology lab, and information on after-school activities. A “Meet Our Teacher” page informs visitors that “Mr. K” is a veteran technology education teacher who works to continually improve his program, as evidenced by his recently added modules on Animated Communication, Video Game Design, and 3D Modeling. T Site Details When Tech Directions asked Kulawik about the site’s beginning, he said that ﬁve members of the school’s Technology Student Association (TSA) chapter— Adrienne Brown, Zachary Friss, Megan Pasko, Kaitlyn Nilsen, and Morgan Syverson—started it. “One of the TSA competitive events is Cyberspace Pursuit, where students are required to build and launch a web site that features the school’s technology education program, their TSA chapter, and the chapter’s ability to research topics pertaining to technology,” he explained. His students arrived at four main goals: • Make the site informative. • Make the site easy to navigate. • Make the site professional looking. • Create a site that will be competitive on the state and national level. In terms of software, the team uses Microsoft FrontPage, Microsoft Word, Macromedia Flash, and Photo Impact. They work on the site both in class as part of the technology lab and after school one day a week. Students generally update once a week, though, if warranted, the site is updated on a daily basis. When asked how they generate content, Kulawik replied that for the TSA Cyberspace Pursuit section of the site, students had to follow the criteria provided by National TSA, which focused in 2008 on the assignment “Develop a Tutorial on Creating a Web Site.” For the rest of the site, they featured information on Kulawik’s Exploring Technology program and related activities. For addressing challenges that arise in site design and maintenance, Kulawik’s students use the DEAL problem-solving process. They started the design process with several brainstorming sessions in which they discussed what they needed to include in the site, its purpose, how to meet the design criteria, and what they wanted the site to look like. A major problem involved how to include all of the content within the page guidelines of the Cyberspace Pursuit event, since they were limited to the main home page, ﬁve pages for the technology program, ﬁve pages for TSA chapter information, and ﬁve pages for the Cyberspace Pursuit information. The students decided to use a frames layout, which would allow them to meet the page requirements and still change the content on the pages. During the Explore phase, students were assigned to look at other sites and critique them, and later discuss the positive and negative aspects of the sites. They could then decide if they wanted to incorporate any ideas they saw into their site. During the Act phase, the students created the site. The team spent seven months working on the site before entering it in the TSA state competition. They continually evaluated and modiﬁed it 24 techdirections ◆ DECEMBER 2008 http://www1.mgsd.k12.nc.us/mmstechnologyeducation/ http://www1.mgsd.k12.nc.us/mmstechnologyeducation/

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Tech Directions - December 2008

Tech Directions - December 2008 Contents Advertisers Index Technically Speaking Direct from Washington The Report Technology Today Technology’s Past Mastering Computers Digital Portfolios—Powerful Marketing Tool for Communication Students Choosing the Right CC Welding Unit—Student Success Depends on It Think Green—Increasing Awareness of Garbage and Recycling Think Green—Teach Students Smart Ways to Reduce Home Energy Use Go International! Build a Simplified Shortwave Receiver Mooresville Middle School Snags Web Site of the Month Gifts for Geeks More than Fun

Tech Directions - December 2008

For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.