Best Practices Academy
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The New Jersey Department of Education designated the Atlantic County and Passaic County ETTCs to serve as the Best Practices Academies for schools in New Jersey. Last October, the Academies conducted 30-hour hands-on sessions for teachers and school administrators from the 46 Best Practice schools on the creation of multimedia websites for their innovative ideas.

Participants learned how to plan and build effective and attractive websites. Websites will feature video clips, animation, artwork, photographs, sound and other multimedia pieces. For more information see the syllabus below or visit these links:

NJ Department of Education Announcement of the Best Practices Academy

Best Practices Academy Course Syllabus

Five-day, 30-hour Workshop on Best Practices Website Construction

Day 1: Introduction to Web Authoring
  1. Examine web sites on the Internet for design flaws / evidence of good practice
  2. Discuss basic template format for a "typical" Best Practice website
  3. Articulate and stress inclusion of the following mandatory "Best Practices" components:
    • Best Practices category;
    • Best Practices title;
    • Description of Best Practice including Objectives;
    • Core Curriculum Content standards addressed (including Cross-Content Workplace Readiness standards) and detailed description of how the Practice specifically addresses these standards;
    • Assessment measures used to determine the extent to which the objectives of the Practice have been met.
  4. Introduction to web pages: Create a simple one-page web site.
    • Title, headers, text, bullets, hypertext links, images, searchable indices referencing the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards
    • Discuss problems associated with images and other "add-ons"
    • Introduction to basic HTML code and edit code by hand.
    • Establish hyperlinks to the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards addressed in each Best Practice

Day 2: Constructing the Website

  1. Plan out design for a five-page website that highlights winning Best Practices project
  2. Use automated features for web site maintenance:
  3. Borders, navigation bars for internal links, cascading style sheet.
  4. Insert tables

Day 3: Web Site Maintenance

  1. Discuss techniques for maintaining a website.
  2. Create templates for "sub-pages."
  3. Post website onto the Internet

Day 4: Graphics and Digital Imaging

  1. Incorporate animations and custom graphics to websites.
  2. Use a digital camera, scanner and photo editing software (MS Image Composer) to create composite images.
    • Create simple graphics and background images.
    • Incorporate background image using cascading style sheet.
  3. Create image map

Day 5: Multimedia and the Web

  1. Explore design concepts to make websites eye-catching, organized and attractive for different audiences
  2. Insert video clips into websites
  3. Download software that will enable video and sound editing
  4. Create simple animations (animated GIF’s)
  5. Review past five days; questions and answer period