Slashdot Mirror
Web Publishing Tools for Kids?
fuzbuh asks: "I want to help an 11 year old who wants to publish a site for kids, and am thinking about what tool(s) to provide for her. Her experience is limited to email, web browsing (on kid sites), and computer games. This, as a first step for her, needs to be easy, and more focused on content than form. What do people suggest for tools for her? A web based page builder (which one)? A WYSIWYG editor (may be a bit complex). A 'Wiki' where only she can edit? Maybe I should just start her with a blog to post her ideas and stories. What have others done? Any ideas and/or suggestions? Thanks in advance!"
It's good for kids to be allowed to explore and learn on their own but I think giving them a step up (into using a simple editor) and then allowing the child to explore on his or her own, has added benefits of requiring a bit more thought.
I hate liberals. If you are a liberal, do not reply.
There's no reason an 11 year old can't learn to write standards compliant HTML or XHTML. It's not a complicated language. Just make sure to show her how to validate her pages.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
I would suggest you check out Coffeecup Html Editor.
Lots of features, yet easy for beginners, oh and it has a "Live Chat feature", which may be much for an 11 year old, but maybe mommy can help?
I hate programs that write crappy pages for you. I have the opinion that if everybody who wanted to create a webpage simply learned a little html before doing so, the web would be a better place. It doesn't have to be flashy - just learn the basics, like body, table, font, p, br, etc. A little knowledge goes a long way. I'm sure even an 11 yr old could understand basic concepts like those, probably even quicker than most adults. You could "borrow" a page layout from some other site, and set up templates for them to edit. It could fun, while at the same time I don't think it hurts to challenge a kid.
When I was 11 I was already familiar with many WYSIWYG editors. I had moved on to doing HTML and Javascript coding. I knew some basic C. I had taught it all to myself because I was interested in it.
If I had only been interested in the content then I probably would have been satisfied with a WYSIWYG editor.
So figure out what her interest(s) is/are. If she wanted to know how to do web development, then let her start poking at teach yourself HTML guides online while she plays with some WYSIWYG editor. If she is only interested in publishing, however, then have her start planning what she would like her site to look like, have her start writing the meat of what will be on the site, and then teach her the basics of a WYSIWYG editor.
If she wants to have embedded blogs, then it's time to at least teach her the basics of the web and of HTML, PHP, Perl, or whatever else might be included in the blog software.
Sorry I can't give you a better answer. I can only say, "it depends on her interests."
What comes first, finding a teacher or becoming a student?
That is, 8 years ago, I had my own website. I taught myself basic HTML and wrote it up in Notepad. So did all my friends, as we had all just gotten our netconnections for the first time and were quite excited about it. I had a Star Wars page. This was long enough ago that Theforce.net didn't really exist yet, and it was still possible for me to get into the upper listings at Altavista.
Anyway, no reason that can't still be done. Best way to learn about such basics as HTML, UNIX, and FTP. Just give them a UNIX account with a few privileges -- that's what my ISP gave me back in the day.
and built my web site using good old plain vi.
It was a great learning experience but I quickly moved onto Perl and Postgresql.
fogcreek has a nice app called CityDesk. It's very easy to use. You can create a template for her and when she graduates to learning html, she can write her own. The personal edition is free. Windows only.
Stupid things kids do.
The real question here is: how comfortable are you with the technology you're introducing to this child? Can you stay far enough ahead of a young inquisitive mind to stear her in the right direction? If she suddenly wants to know all about cascading style sheets are you going to freek? Do PHP and SQL cause you to loose sleep at night?
If you're totally comfortable in this arena, then, by all means, introduce her to the nuts and bolts of web programming. If not, then point her in the direction of one of the "free" page hosts that provide a template driven page layout program.
Education, in any field of endevor, is simply a matter of providing a safe environment in which the recources exist for discovering on their own what you wanted the student to learn in the first place.
I will most likely get modded down to the basement for posting this but what about Frontpage.
You get it for free (well you get Express for free) and its so easy to use even a kid could figure it out. I do not think we should expect a little kids website to be perfectly valid HTML. Using Frontpage will make sure its not....
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
Send her here. Really. I taught myself HTML in my spare moments during a weekend using a much worse tutorial than that, and I was in college at the time. Kids learn faster. In three hours she'll have the HTML figured out and be looking for clip-art.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Why exactly would an 11 year old need a website?? There are too many useless sites out there proclaiming 'I can built a website, I'm so cool!! Look at this picture of my hideous rat-dog!!!11!! k-thx-bye!!'
My site also has pictures of my cat, thank-you-very-much!
Why exactly does a geek NEED a reply option? There are too many chunks of flamebait out there proclaiming "I can be elitist! Look at me make fun of other people! Hahaha, you suck!"
Give him something worthwhile, like some contact with other, nonhostile humans, or have him talk to some kids who aren't just spoiled little brats with high IQs.
***
And, in response to your post a bit deeper into the thread...
***
A geeky troll has absolutely no knowledge of any value to share. He should not even be allowed to use a site as socially oriented as Slashdot, just like he should be prevented by law from procreating.
Let him play with his computers, and don't try to make him grow up like he should have some years ago. Social lives are for people, not elitist bastards. These lessons of tolerance and humility, they can be better taught through counseling. Slashdot only exacerbates the problem and becomes a significant waste of my time, patience, and emotional investment.
I see some folks on here have mentioned Dreamweaver. I don't think I would want to purchase something when I could do it for free and keep the content free, and I want to teach my children the same. I also don't like the whole product activation thing.
My 8 year old boy has started doing his own site using Mozilla Composer. There are some tools on the web, counters and such, that generate HTML code and he's learned to cut and paste that code into his document. When he does he reads the code and tries to understand it, asking questions along the way.
There are plenty of ways to create web content, kids can use any of them. They will suprise you and you might even learn something from their work.
Note that we don't have a Windows based system anywhere in the house. Imagine a child, probing his/her way around the computer in the learning process. Tried that, got tired of fixing broken computers because the kids had screwed something up. My kids, 8 and 6, learn on their own Linux computer. I've had to do less sysadmin stuff to that box than most of the machines at work. They experiment along, lots of trial and error and theres no big panic when they screw something up. Both boys find themselves at home now on Solaris and FreeBSD machines too.
So let the kid use the same tools you would use.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
I'd point her towards Webmonkey for Kids. They have some really neat stuff to get her started.
http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/kids/
Most people would die sooner than think; in fact, they do.
I'm 13, and I've been programming interactive (PHP, mostly) web pages since I was 11. There's no reason yours can't do some basic HTML.