Applying this concept to developing Web use and authoring for children implies children need plenty of guided surfing, in which they are helped by their mentors to seek information efficiently, and also to talk about what makes a Web site a good one, what makes it worth returning to, what makes it fun to use. They need to be helped to recognise and evaluate examples of different genres of Web page, particularly home pages, magazines, and topic information sites. They need to compare sites which use animation simply to catch the user s eye with those where it helps to inform or explain. They also need to have plenty of examples of colour transparencies or printouts of favourite pages on which they and their mentors can do this work. This also incorporates approaches which are fundamental to developing a good sense of appropriate graphic design.
Scaffolding aims to help children make the bridge from being users to being authors.
Adult graphic designers use storyboard and pencil and paper roughs. Designing and using simple templates for storyboarding and roughing text and graphic presentation on paper is much more likely to help children become confident and original Web authors than either leaving them to their own devices or having them depend on the templates incorporated in commercial programs such as Creative Writer and Front Page. HTML programming can be thought of as analogous to typesetting. We do not expect adult authors or graphic designers to typeset their work for publication. This side of Web publication is best left to adult mentors.