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Mission Statement
The mission of the Wilton Resource Room is to provide an interactive, learning center that serves to educate
and enrich all members of the school community through experiences with non-print materials and information and technology,
so that students learn to explore, analyze and make intelligent judgments; become effective users of ideas and information;
and develop into self-directed, life-long learners.
Resource
Description
This site is intended to be kid
friendly, with bold colors and interesting fonts. The subpages should be easy to see and the language should be easy
to read and understand. For the lower grades, pictures will provide visuals for students. This guides students and visually
supports the resources on the pages. The accompanying text is for parental review.
The Dublin Core Metadata has been
added for each resource item in the collection. HTML has been automatically generated thanks to the Dublin Core
metadata editor (http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/metadata/dcdot/).
Access and Use
Visitors to the site have free access and use. This site may
be viewed with a variety of browsers including Internet Explorer, Netscape, and Moxilla Foxfire.
Evaluation
Feel free to contact me with comments, suggestions, or additional links for inclusion. Feedback and suggestions, via
my e-mail or guestbook, are encouraged.
Maintenance
& Enhancement
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Future enhancements
include:
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Adding addtional
grades to the resource room (6-12).
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Adding a Language Arts and Math component.
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Finding a search engine widgit that allows
searching only on this page.
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Determining how to center information.
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Maintenance
will include regularly scheduled visits to the site to check that links are still live. As well, new links will be added or
removed based on suggestions, feedback or the collection policy.
Production
Notes
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I decided
to create a curriculum specific digital library to provide additional resources for students, parents and teachers. This would
serve my community and would apply to my current profession. This site could be used for other districts as well.
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I developed
my initial plan for my digital library including my mission statement and my collection policy.
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My first
step in the process was to contact the Assistant Principals and Instructional Leaders in the three elementary schools in order
to obtain curriculum map information. There are two lower schools (K-2) and one intermediate school (3-5). As I currently,
teach in the 3-5 school I knew the curriculum. However, I contacted the instructional leaders for their input. Unfortunately,
due to summer vacation, I received information from only one of the two K-2 schools. The curriculum is the same for both schools,
so I went on the information I received.
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In addition,
I printed a copy of the curriculum framework from each school’s webpage, and I printed curriculum information off of
the district webpage.
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I reviewed
the curriculum information and generated a list of topics by grade level. The topics were based on the science and social
studies units of study for each grade. I stayed away from Language Arts and Math as the curriculum is spiraling. These subjects
repeat themselves year-to-year in varying degrees, so segmenting the information by grade would have been difficult.
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I created
a Word document for each topic.
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I began
searching the web for a variety of online resources. To find resources I used a variety of sites including, but not limited
to:
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As I
discovered a resource, I reviewed the content, advertising, readability, and visuals to ensure that they fit the collection
policy. As resources were approved, I added them to the Word document. I drafted remarks about the site or used information
from the website itself.
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Resource
lists were created. The number of resources for each list depended on the availability of information that met the goal. Some
resources were more difficult to find than others. For example, find age-appropriate information on magnetism for second graders
was difficult.
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All in
all, I created 33 topic pages, with a combined total of 203 online resources.
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I decided
to use an online, free web host rather than digital library software. I did this because I wanted to be able to use the digital
library during the school year. Unfortunately, the free web hosts do not offer automatic metadata entry when developing pages.
Through asking questions and research, I learned that I could generate the metadata online and enter the XHTML code into the
HTML for each link. I decided to use Tripod over Angelfire or GoogleSites because its design features were easier to navigate
and more extensive.
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The first
element of design was to determine the template for the webpage. I wanted something that would appeal to children. I chose
colors that were bright and patterns that were contemporary. The font, Verdana, is rounded, which seems friendlier, and is
easy to read.
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I inserted
the necessary number of pages based on topics. I added the navigation pages such as “Contact” and “Collection.”
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I designed
each page using the template and made revisions based on what I wanted to do on each page. For example, several pages had
additional areas to add pictures or text. These needed to be removed prior to adding my content.
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I added
the following features: counter, guestbook, recommend this site and search engine. I tried locating a search engine for my
specific page. Unfortunately, Tripod only allows search of all of Tripod, and Google custom search engine would not paste
into Tripod.
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Once
the pages were developed, the headings, links, and remarks were added to each topic page. Each resource name was hyperlinked
to the appropriate link and the actual links were removed.
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The links
back to the home pages were added on each topic page as well as to the resource page.
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I searched
for images on each of the topics and downloaded them from Google Images.
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The images
were added to the topic pages.
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Next,
I added text to the “Home”, “About”, “Collection” and “Contact” pages. I used
some of the information from my initial documentation and developed the rest. The pages were formatted and images were added
(if applicable).
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Using
the DC Dot Metadata Generator, I generated XHTML for each of the links used. This XHTML was added into every resource in the
library.
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I reviewed
the website for consistency and for errors.
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I tried to center all page information
by adding HTML code. Unfortunately, it was not registering. Further research is needed.
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The production notes were completed and added to the library “About” page.
Credits
All resource images uploaded from Google
Images.
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