During this Unit Two Project I really enjoyed creating my website and doing the research to make my website informative and helpful to my audience. Of course, I ran into roadblocks such as what layout should I have, what specifically should I put on the website, and how I should organize the information I put on the website. I am very pleased with my end product and hope that someone will benefit from the information that I collected and put on it.
The first step of creating my website was decide what topic I should focus on that will fit my audience and that I wanted to research to find out more about it. I narrowed this down fairly easily by deciding that I wanted to write about the General Education Diploma rather than what some of the other people were writing about such as childcare and communication. I thought by choosing the GED I could then have enough information to create a website and a topic that I could choose a side to sort of argue on. I was wrong, way wrong. There is actually a lot of information on the GED exam and it differs from state to state. Also, I realized how difficult it was to choose a side and argue it on a website while still being respectful. As I go through each of my pages I will discuss how I emphasized my opinion on the GED rather than having a completely neutral tone about the topic.
In choosing the layout and color theme for the website was fairly easy. I wanted a layout that looked professional and was easy to move around the website from page to page. The first layout that I choose was close to the same color theme as the one I have now but the menu bar was stretched across the top but after adding all of my pages they didn’t all fit so there was a button that said “more…” and when you hovered over it, it would show you the rest of the pages. This didn’t really appeal to me so I found another layout, the one that I am currently using, because I like the fact that the menu bar is vertically on the side and while you are on any page you can easily see and choose another page at any point in time and you could also see all of the pages at the same time instead of only the first two or three pages. I also liked this layout because I was able to have a picture next to the title of the website that would be the same for every page. I chose a picture of a street sign that had the word ‘success’ on it that was angled so only the sky was in the background. The reason I really liked this picture was because I wanted people to feel like by getting a GED you can succeed and that the sky is the limit. You don’t have to graduate high school to have the option to succeed. Even those who couldn’t make it through high school can succeed due to the GED and the opportunities it gives the young adults who take it.
Of course I had to have a home page but it was fairly difficult for me to figure out what to put on the home page. I tried just having my ‘History’ page as my home page but I felt like it jumped into the topic to quickly with no introduction. It was like the example that you showed us in class, you don’t want to have a cliff were your audience feels like they are dropped into the middle of what your talking about and you don’t want your whole website to be like the introduction were it has no body and never really goes into depth about the topic. Instead, you want a skate pipe feel were you are eased into the topic and have enough momentum to keep the reader entertained and wanting to read more. Therefore, I decided to have a different home page that explained the purpose of the website and gave a quick description of what would be on each page. I choose to put a picture on this page because even though it has a picture on the top that is consistent for every page I felt like the page itself needed some sort of image to entertain the reader’s eye so they would be willing to read rather than feeling forced to read.
My next page was my ‘History’ page. The reason I did this was because I figured there are always those people out there who want to know where the GED test came from and why it was even created in the first place. Also, I think it is very interesting that the military was the group that initially wanted the test to be created so that their veterans and soldiers could get civilian jobs since their high school education was disrupted by the draft. Now, however, the military is very strict and don’t accept as many adults who have a GED as they used to. I chose a fun cartoon picture for this page because I figured it could lighten the mood a little and make all of the text look a little less daunting.
For the other three main pages I chose to add pictures and place them in various places on the page to make it a little more appealing to the eye. On my ‘Studying for the GED’ page I wanted it to be fairly simple with not too much information. I did this because I didn’t want one page to take up more of the reader’s attention than it deserved. I also talked about Job Corps briefly because I think that their goal is important and closely related to the topic of my website. In my ‘Value of the GED’ page I talked about how universities, jobs, and the military value the GED compared to a high school diploma. I though this was a fairly important page because it gave some vital information that any adult who is looking to see what they can do with a GED can see their options and chose the best path for them. On my ‘Postsecondary Education’ page I really wanted to warn young adults who are getting or have their GED the difficulties that colleges and universities have when not used to a formal schooling. Many students get caught up in the social life of college while others can’t keep up with the fast pace. I wanted to tell people of the difficulties that some GED holders go through and how they overcame their problems. On this page I also put tips on studying and organizing because everyone can improve on their organizational skills. Finally, there is my work cited page that doesn’t have any pictures because I honestly couldn’t think of what to put on the page and I think how boring the page is, why make it more exciting when really its not.
My audience for this website is people who are looking into the GED as an alternate path to high school. In my website I emphasis how the GED test is for adults and that it is an adult education program that was created so that those who can’t finish or go back to high school can get credentials that are similar to high school. I emphasized this in each of my pages and especially in my history page.
Overall, I am very pleased with my website and hope that it will benefit someone. To find my website you just have to go to www.generaleducationdiploma.weebly.com
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