We continue to evolve our list of top 100 things that kids should know. Last week we got around to building websites. I consider this a two-part exercise. Part one is really learning how to ‘program’ in terms of HTML and some simple JavaScript. Part two is learning how to design a site and communicate via the Web. It’s mostly play at this stage, but you can throw in lots of side topics about thinking and communication. Great opportunities for synthesis!

We started out with a brief whiteboard session about how a page is fetched from a server, which they mostly understood. I hope that LeFever makes a film about it, similar to his great Twitter in Plain English.

We then opened up Aptana Studio and created some pages using XHTML. After an initial example, I just let them play with the various tags to see what they did (Aptana gives hints anyway). You know kids - they soon find their way around.

Then we moved to the incredibly powerful iWeb on the Mac, part of the iLife 08 family of apps. It’s a cinch to use and the rich themes enabled my kids to create media-rich sites with photos, blogs and videos, including embedded YouTube clips.

We’re going to use the blogs they created as a supplement to their (hand-written) diary-writing activities, which form part of their overall education program. Writing ‘out loud’ for blog readers is different to writing a private diary, although you might not think so reading some blogs!

The diary writing is really a vehicle to develop some writing skills. However, writing to one’s self is also a valuable thinking skill. I have adopted a different approach to note-taking ever since I read Accidental Genius, which is all about private writing as a creativity tool. Worth a read.