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!"

Comments

Time constraints?

[Acidic_Diarrhea]

What type of time do you have to help this child in the learning process? You note that a WYSIWYG editor may be a bit too complicated for the child but I think that if you have some time to spend, the child would easily adapt to using that. It would also challenge the child more than simply saying, "Oh, here's a free blogging site. Type into the box and hit 'Submit'."

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.

Standards compliant (x)HTML

[GigsVT]

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.

Re:Standards compliant (x)HTML

[Glonoinha]

Yea, just teach her to do it in notepad.
Want (or feel that she needs) WYSIWYG? Get a box of crayons. The world needs a bunch of things, but more gimp drag-n-drop web'masters isn't one of them.

No offense intended. Heck turn her loose with an HTML book and notepad - she may amaze you (11 year old children do that.)

Really....

[hawkbug]

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.

Depends on what the kid's interest is.

[dalutong]

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."

When I was 11...

[sailracer6]

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.

when I was four I learned HTML..

[Anonymous Coward]

and built my web site using good old plain vi.
It was a great learning experience but I quickly moved onto Perl and Postgresql.

Helping an 11 yr old.

[idommp]

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.

Frontpage

[a.koepke]

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....