Current Classes | Syllabus

COMM 300 Introduction to Multimedia

Web Pages for Civil Rights Leaders

The World Wide Web has become the single greatest tool for the dissemination of information. More people read, research, publish, share, discuss and otherwise communicate over the Web than any other medium. In this final project we will explore this communications tool by building a Web site as a class. For our subject, we will create an informational site about civil rights leaders. Imagine that this site is being built to accompany a museum exhibition, or to be used as an educational resource.

Your first step is to choose your subject and then do some research. The class will be divided into groups of 2-3; each group will examine a particular civil-rights/freedom movement. Together, your group (with my help in class) will create a simple home page for your section. In addition, every member of the group will create a page about one specific leader of your chosen movement. Thus a group of 2 will be responsible for 3 pages total, and a group of 3 will create 4 total pages. The "home" page should contain a brief introduction about the movement (with pictures) and links to the individual leaders' pages (more on the structure and layout of the pages later...).

For this project, you may choose between the following movements:

• African-American civil rights
• Latino American rights
• Native American rights
• Women's rights
• LGBT rights
• Workers' rights (factory workers, migrant workers, etc.)

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list; there are many other groups that have struggled for rights and freedom in the US and throughout the world (including Asian Americans, immigrant groups, the blind community, the deaf community, the elderly, children, and so on); but I must limit the scope of the project.

Part 1: Organizing and gathering assets

1. Choose your movement; we will do this in class. It is likely that not everyone will get his/her first choice (there is a limit of 3 people per group and every group will do a different movement), so be prepared to work on a second of third choice. Note that if you are not present you will be assigned a group.
2. Meet with your partners; share contact information (phone, e-mail).
3. Develop a plan of action; you will need to research your movement and learn its history, etc. Each member of the group must also select one of your movement's leaders and research him/her. You will use this information to create a page with a short biography (100-200 words).
4. Find images to use for your site. Search the Web, but you can try
   1. The Library of Congress (http://www.loc.gov/pictures/)
   2. SmithsonianMag.com
   3. Biography.com
   4. You can also try to find images you can use under the Creative Commons licence. Go to CreativeCommons.org and search for images that meet your needs. Many images can be used for educational purposes as long as you give proper citation. Note the specific requirements of any image you use.
5. Gather you images into a safe place for future use. You can put them on a flash drive, but you may want to back them up on a hard drive or lab computer Data HD.

Part 2: Set up a Dreamweaver site

1. Choose a computer and create a folder to serve as your root folder. Give it an appropriate name (like "Joe-and-Sally-civil-rights-root"). You may want to put back-up copies on other computers and/or jump drives.
2. Launch Dreamweaver and create a new site. Give it an appropriate name (like "Joe and Sally's Civil Rights site") and point it to your root folder.
3. Create a new, blank HTML 5 page and save it as index.html. This will be your home page.

Part 3: Create the basic page structure

Use HTML 5 structural tags to create a basic framework for the page. Use header, footer, section, and nav tags. You may also want to use article, and aside tags if they fit the design. We will work on this together in class.

This page will become your "home" page; it will contain an introduction to your civil-rights movement and links to your other pages (as well as photos). Save this page as index.html (“index.html” is the usual name for site home pages).

Part 4: Add design with CSS

Once again, we will go over some options in class. However, you will be encouraged to develop your our styles.

Part 5: Create additional pages

Once the first page is created, you can use it as a template for your other pages. Simply save it with a new name, then strip-out the home page content, and add the new content (leave persistent elements like the header, footer an navigation). Do this for all of your additional pages.

Upon completion

Compress your root folder (right-click on the folder and choose compress) and upload it to the drop box I set-up for the project.