web authoring
This page contains links that may be helpful during the Bok Center Learning Lab's Web Authoring Workshop for GENED1001 Stories From the End of the World.
why web authoring?
Because the web is powerful! Almost anything (digital?) you can imagine can live on the web. Web authoring is an excellent choice of medium if your project combines text and other media, such as images or maps. It's also particularly strong if your content needs to be interactive in some way. But the expansiveness of the web means you as a creator will need to make targeted choices if you choose web authoring.
In addition, web authoring comprises a variety of things you might make, each of which communicates differently:
- Some pages on the web are literally documents. They are meant to be read like any other paper or article or story you might write. However, because these documents are on the web, they might embed images, videos, gifs, or links to other resources.
- Some sites use a map or timeline or gallery or slide show or other graphical representation to organize information. There might be an intended reading order, but the viewer might also be free to explore.
- Still other sites are true interactives. What the user sees or reads depends somehow on what the user does. Interactives include choose-your-own-adventure stories, games, and animations that respond to mouse or keyboard inputs.
This breakdown suggests that a key decision point in web authoring is the level of interactivity. Are you using the web to combine text and other media? Or do you need to build your site in a tool that will allow your user to interact in ways other than scrolling and clicking links?
And why from an academic communication standpoint might you take advantage of these features of the web?
- Visuals: As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. But more seriously, we process visual information more quickly than verbal, so visuals can help orient your reader to your content. Visuals are also good at setting moods and producing emotional responses, which might be especially important to the project of creating an apocalypse.
- Graphic Organizers: Traditional prose only allows you to relate content in one way-- content preceeds or follows or content. Graphic organizers can present content in a variety of relations from temporal to spacial to conceptual. If your apocalypse unfolds across multiple places at the same time or is otherwise non-linear, a graphic organizer could be a good choice.
- Interactivity: Interactives offer a deeper level of engagement to your "reader". If it's important to your vision that the reader somehow sees events unfolding as a product of their choice, a choose-your-own-adventure might be a good way to go. If you want to model chance and uncertainty, games or even incorporating simple game mechanics like a dice roll into a story can produce these effects.
Here are some tools you might consider as you build your web authoring project. They are grouped into:
- Site Builders-- tools you can use to create text-based web pages with no coding experience required
- Roll Your Own-- a couple of places to look if you're new to coding and want to get a sense of where you might start
- Specialty-- a collection of low-code or no-code tools specificially for maps, timelines, choose-your-own-adventure stories, etc.
(No-Code) Site Builders
Roll Your Own
(Note: We don't recommend learning to code solely for the purposes of this project, even if we definitely recommend learning for yourself in the longer term. For now, you can build an awesome site using one of the builders.)
Specialty
- TimelineJS: an interactive timeline builder
- StoryMapJS: combine maps, images, and text to create traveling story
- Google Earth: draw and annotate on a 3D globe. There's also the Studio version that allows you to create animations.
- Storyboard: interactive, choose-your-own-adventure stories
- Twine: interactive stories with many paths
HOSTING
One additional consideration as you work on a web authoring project is how you'll host your project, a.k.a. where it will live on the interwebs. Many of these tools allow you to publish your project on their servers, including Google Sites, StoryMapJS, Storyboard and others.
However, if you want to combine tools or use a custom domain, you might need to look into other hosting options.
- Harvard hosts Scalar sites, called "books", which can embed maps, timelines, and other media, for you and also offers a pilot hosting service where you can build in Wordpress and more through the Library.
- Another free option is Github Pages. This requires a little bit of setup, but you can find a step-by-step guide from a prior course we worked with here. Scroll down to the section titled "Making your website".
QUESTIONS
If you have any questions after the session, or later as you're working on your web project, feel free to reach out to us at help.learninglab.xyz! We will put together a customized response to your question or tutorial for you.