Extra-Credit Websites for Astronomy

One of the means of obtaining extra credit in this class is by making a student homepage on astronomy. This is not only useful for extra credit; it is a valuable thing to learn how to do for your general education. It is up to you as to what you put on such a homepage if you choose to do one, but I am looking primarily for originality and initiative in deciding how many points to give. Just putting some pictures there will get you some points for effort in figuring out how to do it, but max points come for those pages that have put some thought and explanation into the content.
Useful Resources
You may find the following resources useful if you decide to try to do a homepage (by the way, these resources should be sufficient to get you started even if you don't know the first thing about putting stuff on the Web, so don't let lack of experience keep you from trying):

1. If you wish, you can put your homepage on the UT system. In order to do this, click here to register for a a UT Unix/Website account if you do not already have one. If you do already have such an account, click here to access and manage the account. This second link will let you create and edit web documents for your site.

Note that you don't have to put the website on the UT system if you have a more convenient place to put it. It just needs to be accessible at a valid web address so that your professor can see it.

2. If you need more assistance in getting started, you can check with your teaching assistant or professor.

3. There is an extensive tutorial on the Web for the basics of how to use the Web in education at http://www.webteacher.org. Although the site is targeted at K-12 educators, it is in fact widely used at the university level too.

4. If you try to do more fancy things like put tables or graphs, there are some tools in Online Journey through Astronomy (OJTA) that can be useful. On the splash pages that show the list of chapters for OJTA there is a toolbar (the symbol is a hammer). Open that toolbar and you will find an HTML tablemaker and a Plotter that can be used to produce tables or plots for a web page.

Grading
Websites will be graded near the end of the semester on a date to be announced. Students will have until this time to alter the website before grading. You will be requested to send me an email message near the end of the semester containing the words "astronomy website" in the subject heading and the URL address for the website in the body of the message.

The highest grades will go to sites that are original and that show more thought that just throwing a few pictures together. The very highest grades will go to sites that convey useful astronomy information and are interesting---that is, the kind of site that another student would be interested in looking at to learn something about astronomy. Do not get someone else to do the site for you. I reserve the right to question any particular student about how the site was constructed if I suspect that it was created by someone else for the student. You may get technical help and advice, but the work must finally be your original work.

Posting to Newsgroup
If you have made a website, you may also post the address to the newsgroup for the class to see if you would like. However, this is optional and will not influence your grade for the site.