April 05, 2004

8th Grade Web Projects I remember having to do instructional presentations, but in my day we did it with posters, none of this fancy HTML stuff. Some of them are pretty funny. I especially like how you can see the junior high student stereotypes, like the Teacher's Pet, and the slacker. There's also the sarcastic goth, and of course the pot heads
posted by rochiebones 20 years ago
  • I love the one that tells you how to cook a microwave burrito. [banana]
  • God almighty. The color scheme on that burrito page made my eyes bleed. Fun post.
  • (putting burrito crease side up makes less explosive cheese) This kid is obviously far advanced for his age sector. He should be studying quantum mechanics or something.
  • You know, when i was in gradeschool and we had to do these projects my parents wouldn't help. So being the spastic child I still am my projects always looked totally awful. Glue splotches everywhere, poorly written descriptions, etc. Many of the other kids got help from their parents and presented neatly typed posters with that trim you'd buy at the classroom supply store. So now the kids use the web and I've gotta say they carry the torch well for all of us who made ugly projects, regardless of medium. Its nice that participation by design excludes parental intervention and allows the kids to do it all themselves.
  • This was a hoot. Thanks!
  • dagnabbit, back in MY day all we could make were shoebox dioramas. but we where perfectly HAPPY with 'em, goddamn it! marched to school uphill barefoot through the snow to make our goddamn dioramas. damn computer whizkids nowadays. harmph.
  • The How to Jump page made me think about things that I'm too embarassed even to post a Curious George about. How does jumping work? Oh, and exactly, shotsy. I never could manage the polish other kids had in their projects.
  • And [banana], rochiebones.
  • OMG! SideDish, I made an Island of the Blue Dolphins diorama in Elementary school too! My diorama did not contain any fancy pipe cleaners, fuzz balls, or strings. Just straight up construction paper and gluestick. And my parents refused to do my projects the way other kid's parents would which is why I was a C student in elementary school, (but an A student in high school). What the hell was the ability to make a good looking diorama going to do for me in the future anyways? P.S. sorry for using the phrase "OMG!", it just came out.
  • The instructions on that "How to ride a bike" one would never work. When I was taking an intro to physical anthro course, our instructor made everyone write explicit instructions on how to get up from a chair and walk a few steps, then he took the instructions and tried to follow them as precisely as possible. None of them worked at all.
  • Drawing Bob Marley Though to be fair, the pages I make nowadays aren't any better than these. It is good to see this as something taught to the young people.
  • from the taco page: Then you are able to put any vegetable that you want in your taco. um... like parsnips? rutabega? kohlrabi? what the hell kind of taco is that going to be?
  • and (to be snarky) if you're going to teach 8th graders to make a web page, make 'em learn html. it isn't that hard. using a program that automatically generates crappy code (stylesheets AND font tags? wtf!!!) isn't any better than making them use word and saving for web. teach 'em something useful! they're 8th graders, they're smarter than you think (burrito page color combination notwithstanding!).
  • clf: that assumes the teacher knows HTML and how to make pages better than these kids. Also, 8th grade kids power point presentations. There are other links on the main page but I think the tens of people looking at it now have killed the bandwidth.
  • I need to reread Island of the Blue Dolphins now that I know where California is :) And it's been so long, it would be like a whole new book.
  • When is the W3C going to ban the background element of the body tag? or How half the 8th grade class of Glacier Creek Middle School lost their chances of a summer job doing web design.
  • Here's another one for all you PowerPoint fans out there.
  • How to BURNINATE!
  • something about this reminds me of that "Children's art review" which was hilarious. Oh, here it is.
  • Oh wow. The burninate one was *awesome*. It makes me have hope for the future. (I too made a shoebox diorama for the Island of the Blue Dolphins. Heh.)
  • I told you dragons were great.
  • Trogdor is more than just a dragon. (he's also now the best Buffy pop-culture reference ever)