Current Article All Articles About the Author Q&A Podcasts Teachnology Blog

When you launch your Web browser, where does it go? What Web site shows up first in the browser window? Unless you've changed it, your browser will automatically connect to the Web site of its publisher: a Windows computer will connect to the Microsoft or MSN site; an Apple Computer will connect to an Apple site; and the Netscape browser will launch the Netscape home page. There's not much of educational value on any of these Web pages. The MSN site touts weight-loss schemes, online auctions, dating tips, and automobile reviews. The Netscape startup page shows large colorful ads for Amazon, Dell Computers, and "Shy and Sexy LeAnn Rimes Top Videos." The Microsoft page is a series of advertisements for its products, including MechAssualt, in which we learn that "these lumbering giants are totally bad-a__. We guarantee that the flamethrower-toting Hellbringer is going to be popular."

Putting these pages up automatically every day in front of our students (or ourselves) is probably not a good idea. It's like placing ads for acne cream and fast cars on the blackboard. Many schools and teachers have designed their own startup pages, and set all of the browsers in their school or classroom to open up to these educationally-useful sites. Some have even designed startup pages specially designed for students and parents at home. This week's article helps you build your own custom startup page, and to set your computer so that it takes its first step on the Web journey on a good footing.

Why Start up?

Some students need to be channeled. Others are fine once they're set off in the right direction. Many need help organizing their resources. All benefit from the guidance of a teacher. These truths are especially relevant to students' experience on the Internet. Left completely alone, with no organization or guidance, few will make a successful voyage and only a handful will arrive at the desired shore. An Internet Startup Page lets the teacher or the school guide and channel the Web browsing experience from the very start. It organizes Web resources in a scheme useful and familiar to the students and the subjects they are studying. It makes it easy to connect to the assignments and references and indexes that are most important to academic work.

A startup page for a history class in eighth grade, for instance, might include:

• Contact information for the teacher
• A link to the course outline
• A link to the companion Web site for the textbook used in the course
• A link to The History Place at http://www.ushistoryplace.com, a collection of American History resources
• A summary of this week's assignment, and a link to its hotlist
• Links to the Google and AltaVista search engines
• A link to the high school History Department Web site
• A link to the school's Web site
• A link to the American Map Collection at the University of Texas at http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/americas.html
• A link to HistoryPictures.com at http://www.historypictures.com

...and other items selected by the teacher. Whenever the computers in this classroom are started, the browser automatically displays this page, and the students find it fast an easy to use to get their work done. Many students put this page on their list of bookmarks on their home computers as well. It took the history teacher less than an hour to put this page together, and another half-hour to set up all the computers to use it. This 90-minute investment has paid off several times over in increased efficiency for students.

A startup page can serve a course, a department, a school, or a library. Such a page is simple in design, limited in scope, and easy to use. You can see the home page for our lab at the College at http://www.bu.edu/jlengel/mmcom.html.

Not the Home Page

But your school already has a home page, and all the computers are set to bring it up - But a home page is seldom an educational page. For most schools, it's a publication that markets the school to its public constituents, designed for public relations and identity-building. Seldom do these home pages directly help a student get her work done. The home page for our College at http://www.bu.edu/com is an example of a nice page for publicity, but not much for learning.

A startup page serves a different purpose from the typical home page. A startup page is for your students to guide them to the resources they need for your course or curriculum, and that's it.

Plan the Page

The first step in establishing a startup page is to plan the links. A startup page consists mostly of links to existing sites, and a good way to start planning is to list the tasks that your students need to accomplish on the Web. Your list might include the items in the first column of the table below.

Then for each task, in the second column, list the resources the students will need to accomplish it.

Now comes the important work: finding (or creating) the best links for each task. For help in this regard, you might want to look at the booklet A Student Guide to Research on the Web, by Children's Software Press (http://www.childsoftpress.com), or at the article in this series entitled Finding It On The Web. You don't want to list every possible link; only those that will be of utmost value to your students and necessary to their work. Locate the links - or create them in the form of assignment sheets and sample quizzes. When you locate a link, copy its URL from the address box of your browser, and paste it into a Word document. After the link enter a few words describing the link. Put all the links in this Word document - you'll use it as the basis for building your startup page.

Build the Page

You can build your page in one of three ways: with Microsoft Word, with a Web-page editing program such as Dreamweaver, or with an HTML editor. It's beyond the scope of this article to teach you all three methods, but you will find detailed information on the first method in the article Creating a Web Page with Microsoft Word that appeared earlier in this series.

No matter which method you choose, the page should contain a title, such as History 8 Resources, and a list of the links from your planning. It's best to label each link with a descriptive name, such as History Place, rather than with its URL. You may also want to include an illustrative image (see Using Digital Images, a three-part series of articles in this collection), but keep the design and layout simple: this is a working page, not an attractive come-on.

Using Word, you can simply format nicely the list of links you developed in your planning. Then make links to each site:

1. Select the label of the site, such as History Place.
2. Choose Insert - Hyperlink from the menubar.
3. Paste or type the URL of the site, such as http://www.ushistoryplace.com
4. Click OK, and the link it made.

The link should appear underlined in blue in the Word document. When you click it, it should open your browser and link to the desired site. Once the document is linked and formatted as necessary, choose File - Save for Web from the menubar. Give the file a simple, one-word filename such as history8startup.html. Word will save the startup page as a Web page, with the .html filename extension. You can test this page by opening it with your Web browser.

Post the Page

If you or your school or your department has a Web server, the easiest way to post the page is to copy it to the server. You may need to contact your school's webmaster to help you with this. Once posted, your webmaster will tell you the URL of this page, which might be something like http://myschool.mydistrict.mystate.k12.us/
middleschool/history8startup.html. Make a note of this URL, since you will need it when you set up the computers.

Even without a Web server, you can post the page on each of the computers in your classroom (or in the library), and it will work just as well. Simply copy your startup HTML file to the browser folder - right next to the browser application - on each computer's hard drive, where it is not likely to be erased.

Set the Browser

Now it's time to set the browsers on all your computers so that they automatically open your startup page. Here's how:

• With Internet Explorer on Windows, choose Tools - Internet Options from the menubar.
• With Internet Explorer on Macintosh OS 8 or 9, choose Edit - Preferences - Browser Display from the menubar.
• With Internet Explorer on Macintosh OS X choose Explorer - Preferences - Browser Display from the menubar.
• With Netscape, choose Edit - Preferences - Navigator from the menubar.

Into the box labeled Home Page - Address, type or paste the URL of your startup page (if it's on a Web server), or its filename (if it's on the hard drive in the browser folder.)

Now close the Preferences window, and click the Home button on your browser. You should connect to your startup page. And every time the browser is opened on this computer, it will connect to that page.

Use it, Update it, Revise it

Once the computer are set to start from your special page, give the students an assignment that causes them to use it. Watch them as they work. Make note of what needs to be changed. To update or revise the page, open the original file in Word (or whatever program you used to create it), make the necessary revisions, save it in HTML format with the same filename, and re-post it to the server or to the hard disks. Let your students suggest new items for the startup page that will enable them to work better.