Embedded Files
The second part of the Documentary Video Project is to build a web site on the specific topic you will be covering for your second documentary video. There are several reasons for this part of the project that are connected to supporting the work you will be doing on the second documentary video and also the History Fair Project you will be doing in history next year. The process of building a web site is many ways similar to making a documentary.
First, building a web site involves thinking about and planning how to organize the presentation of materials in a systematic way. A web site divides topic into pages and sections that each cover a specific part of the topic. The work put into organizing these parts of a web site will carryover into organizing the second documentary.
Second, a good web site uses text and images together to communicate a message in a way that is similar to how a documentary uses visuals to support the narration. One purpose of the web site project is to build the visuals (maps, data visualizations, and charts) that you will be using in the second documentary.
Third, web sites need to communicate in a form that is direct and concise. The process of writing the text for the web page will help you focus your writing and develop the phrases that you will use in the script for your documentary.
For these reasons, going through the process of building a web site will help you in these three areas and make the process of making your second documentary a smoother process. An additional points is that one of the options for that you will have in the History Fair project for next year is to do a web page. This project will give you some experience with this project option.
In this web site project, can use any web page building tool that you are comfortable with using. The instructions listed below are for using Google Sites, which is a good basic tool for building web pages - unfortunately, it does not work on the ipad. There is a short guide to using Google Sites after the description of the web page assignment. This is the link for Google Sites.
The Project will be due on Tuesday, May 27, 2025
This is the link for the form to submit your web page project - click here
Your web site should consist of one web page that has a minimum of five sections. The idea is that each section will match a section in your documentary. Organizing the sections for the web page will help you think about how to break down the topic in the documentary into smaller "chunks" of information. There should be a narrative progression to the sections in the web site - similar to the narrative progression in the documentary. You do not need to have multiple pages to your web site.
You need to have one visual for each section that you have made. You will build the visuals in Google Sheets and Drawing and import them to the web page. An important purpose for this project is to have you build visuals for the second documentary project. You need to think about which type of visual will best support the information presented in that section.
This is the rubric that will be used to grade the web page - click here
Sample Rough Draft Organization for Web Page
Chart of Visual Type to the Information Presented
A good web page uses visuals to convey and support important information. This allows the web page to be more efficient with texts, and not become too text heavy. The chart below shows the best types of visuals to use with different types of information. You should look at the specific information presented in each section of your web page and use the appropriate visual for that information.
Guide to Using Google Sites
Parts of a web site - Before getting into the details of how to build a web site, it is important to first cover the different parts of a web site. The web site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry will be used to illustrate this guide.
A web site is based around a "Home Page", which is the first page on a web site. The Home Page introduces the web site and contains the hyperlinks to all of the other sites on the page. The top of the Home Page is the Header which has the site title and the navigation bar of hyper links to the rest of the web site. The Header will appear on all of the other pages on the web site. The Header for the web site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry has a background image of a Caribbean sugar plantation to provide visual support for the site title.
Underneath the Header is the content of the each page on the web site. This content is broken into sections that are focused on specific topics. Each section begins with a section title. After the title, the content of each section is made up by text and visual images. A good way to think of these sections is as paragraphs in an essay.
The text and visuals on a web page are designed to work together to support a main point. The text is used for explaining and making connections and the visuals provide the details and facts. The basic idea is that the web page viewer will look at the visuals for information and then see the context and connection from reading the text. For example, in the web site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry, the first section is shows how the European sugar industry was a "global" industry that drew together resources from across the Atlantic Ocean to enrich Europeans. The visuals provide much of the evidence for this section. The map describes the way resources were brought together. The data visuals describe the scale of the industry and the time frame in which it operated. The second section describes how sugar plantations operated. It starts with an icon visual that explains the details of the process for producing sugar. The space under this visual uses the ideas in the visual to support the comparison of a sugar plantation to an industrial factory. When designing the layout for each section it is important to think about the best location for the visual in relation to the text that works with the visual.
Background images are used to visually separate the sections from each other. These images are chosen to reinforce the main idea in each section. For example, the background for the "Global Industry" section is a nineteenth century map of the Atlantic Ocean. Setting up background images can be tricky. It is important to fade the image so that does not overwhelm the text and visuals.
The process of making a web site is similar to making a documentary video because both types of projects require a significant amount of planning and organization the early parts of the project. Starting a project without proper planning can result in a lot of frustration and wasted time later in the project.
The process of making a web site is similar to making a documentary video because both types of projects require a significant amount of planning and organization the early parts of the project. Starting a project without proper planning can result in a lot of frustration and wasted time later in the project.
Step One - Plan structure of web site - The first step in building a web site is to plan out the structure of the web site. This means setting out what will be covered in the web site and how the web site will cover the material. This plan should describe the architecture of the web site in terms of the specific pages on the web site and the sections on each page. For this project, you will only be building a single page that is divided in sections.
Step Two - Create a folder in Google Drive to hold the web site files and all supporting files (images, videos and other materials) - A web page contains a lot of supporting materials. It is important to keep track of these materials by having a single place where they are all located. Again, similar to making a documentary video, these supporting flies should be clearly named so you can easily find the file when you are looking for it.
Step Three - Build a collection of draft visuals (images, data visuals, charts and maps) using Google Sheets and Drawing and other tools. Preparing the visuals before building the web site will make the process of building the web site easier. It is easier to build a web site when you already have content ready. An important part of the process in planning the structure of the web site is to think about what will be covered on each page and section. Thinking about and building types of visuals each section and page will help clarify the focus of each page and section. You do not want to have a web page of long blocks of text.
This is a guide to using Google Sheets to make graphs - click here
This is a guide to using Google Drawing to make visuals - click here
This is a guide to an on-line map maker - click here
The image to the right shows the map and data visual for the first section of the Home Page of the site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry. The image was built with a map illustrated with arrows and four data visuals . The reason for building one visual that is made up of five images is because it is easier to move, place and size, one visual on the web page than it is to work with multiple visuals. Unfortunately, Google Sites makes it difficult to size and locate images near each other (this is because of the way it is set up to convert sites from desktop to mobile views). Putting all the images in one visual means that the location, position and size of the images in relation to other is kept in fixed proportions.
After the image was built in Google Drawing, it was published to the web and then the url for the image was inserted into the web page.
Step Four - Create the site in Google Sites - Google Sites is an easy to use program for building web sites. Basically, you can use the task bar on the right hand side of the screen to create the different parts of the web site. The task bar will let you add new pages and put content on to pages. Adding sections to a page, content or a Google gadget, is done by clicking on the content option and dragging it into the work area.
Once you are ready to publish your web site to the internet, you can do this by clicking on the purple button above the Task Bar Navigation.
When you first create the site, it will look like this:
You can build content sections by adding sections from the tool bar on the right hand side of the page.
Step Five - Design the Rough Draft of the Web Site by building the Header (top of page), creating sections and putting in content (text notes and visuals). The image to the right shows the rough draft for the web site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry. The image shows the how the Header, section titles, text boxes and images were put onto the page.
Step Six - Edit the web page layout, text and visuals. This is can be a time consuming process of trial and error (another similarity with making a documentary video). First you need to put in the text and edit it so that it works with the visuals (provides context and connections) without duplicating the information communicated by the visuals. Remember, the visuals should be designed to communicate facts and evidence in a way that engages the viewer in the material. An important part of this process is going back to edit the visuals in Google Drawing (and Google Sheets) so that visuals are clear and well organized. An example of this type of editing is shown in a comparison of the web site Sugar & Slavery: The Caribbean Sugar Industry. The rough draft of the web page had the visual of the map and data visuals as a vertical sidebar on the right side of the page with the map above the data visuals. However, this did not work well with the text and some of the data visuals were too small to be read. As part of the editing process this visual was tuned into a horizontal image with the map next to the data visuals. This meant reworking the visual in Google Drawing and re-inserting it into Google Sites.
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