Have you ever thought about creating your own web space?
It is a great challenge, for young people especially, to find their apt position in the web space, in order to be able to exchange their ideas, services and goods on the global market. Therefore, the Digital Literacy for EFL Students course focuses on developing this skill among its participants, in order to prepare them for the digital era as future professionals.
DID YOU KNOW?
- WWW stands for World Wide Web and it was invented in 1989 by Tim Berners-Lee. He also introduced the first web server, the first browser and editor, as well as the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).
- The first website (info.cern.ch) was published in 1991 by Tim Berners-Lee.
- In 2013 alone, the number of websites increased from about 630 million to 850 million by the end of the year.
- Today there are more than 1 billion active websites on the Internet.
There are basically two types of websites: static and interactive. Interactive sites allow you to interact with the site owner, while the static only present information and do not allow any interactivity between the owner and the audience, at least not directly. There are websites that are produced by enthusiasts for personal use or entertainment, and they are mostly informational. However, most of the sites are commercial and aim to make money, using a variety of models, such as advertising, e-commerce (you can actually buy products or services directly through the web site), freemium sites (you can use some of the contents for free, while premium contents are paid for).
In order to create your own web space, you will need to provide a domain name, which is your own web address, as well as hosting – a service that connects your site to the Internet. This might require a certain fee, which varies in different countries, although there are many other free platforms, like wordpress.com, which allow you to create a website from scratch in an easy way. Check out the links (8. How to Make a Website, and 9. How to Build a Website using HTML) available on our Padlet – Digital Literacy for EFL Students for more information.
For the purpose of this training, we decided to use our school’s website as our domain name in order to introduce students with the basics of web design using HTML. Students are encouraged to prepare their own short biographies for the About Us section, and are given a classroom demonstration on how to post their bios to the website.
Please share your comments with us!
