Biography Webs

This writing invitation will give you familiar with building a biography website.  The idea is to create multiple screens and embed links within the text you write for each screeen. This places students in a situation where they have to think about relationships between pieces of text they have written and will write.  Anticipating that they will need to write something that connects to a current piece of text challenges students to think about textual relationships.

Begin your biography web by creating 5 pages.  To do this, go up to "new" at the top of your screen.

Give your new page a one-word name. Do not capitalize the word or put any "unusual" characters in it.  You may initially name these pages "one," "two," "three," etc. But later you will want to change the names to something that reflects the topic of each page.

Now you can begin writing your pages.  You will write about yourself!!  You might want to think of categories or you might want to focus on a specific memory and divide that memory into "categories."  I have created a web about this conference, and I've divided it into five different "categories."  "Professional," Shopping," Sightseeing,"Books," and "Sockhop."

1.  Once you have created your five files, choose the first one you want to work on.  Go up to "format" at the top of your screen.  Click on "page title and properties." Enter the title of your page, your name as author, and a description of the information contained on your page.

2.  Once you have filled out the info in "page title and properties," go back up to format and click on "page colors and background."  Here you can choose a background color for you web page, determine the colors for your text and your links, etc. 

3.  You may want to use a background image or border for your page. You can find lots of those at places like Icon Bazaar
Save your background and then go back to "page colors and backgroun," click on "choose file" under the space for background.

4.  You can now set up a simple web page.  Begin typing your text just as you would if you were using a word processing program.

5.  You may want to insert an image. You will need to find an image, save it by right clicking on the image and saving it either on your desktop or some other place on your computer.   Once you have saved your image, place your cursor where you want to see the image.  Then go up to "insert," click on "image," click on "choose file," and find your image where you saved it on your computer.  Click "open," and the "ok."  Your image will appear where you have placed your cursor.

6.  To make a link to another page in your web, highlight the work that you want your reader to click on. Then go up to the linking tool at the top of your screen.  Click on "choose file" and select the name of the page you want to link to.  Click on "open." 

7.  If you would like to link to a website, go up at the linking tool.  In the space where it says "link location," type the full web address.  You can type the words you want to use as a link in the space above where you have put the address, or you can type that text on your webpage, highlight, then go to the linking tool.

8. Make sure you save everything as you work!!!

9. To preview your work, to up to "file," and click on "browse page."  You will then be able to see what your webpage will probably look like on the internet. In order to upload your page to the internet, you will need to have a place to do that. You can take out space on any of the free web hosting services like Geocities. Or you can purchase ad free space for a web hosting service such as Hostway

Click here for an example of a bio web