Anybody with the only ability to use the Internet browser can make a Treasure page on-line in this section.
THIS IS A NEW VERSION of the generator. We have to remark that there is a major improvement regarding the way of saving the web page. To do that there is now one simple procedure which works with all the browsers.
First of all, you should make a new folder in your hard disk where you will save the generated page and where you will place the images you wish to include on your WebQuest page. The images can have the JPG and the GIF formats. The latter can be animated.
The Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) is used for images with up to 256 colors; therefore, it is suitable for icons and drawings. The GIF image has no loss when it is compressed.
The Joint Photographics Experts Group format (JPEG o JPG) is suitable for pictures with up to 16.7 million colors. The compression level can be chosen when saving the file, knowing that a higher level of compression results in lower image quality. For example, a BMP photograph with a file size of 1,400 Kb can be converted to a JPG image with a file size of 75 Kb.
In Windows O.S. you can make a new folder by clicking My PC icon and then selecting File/New/Folder. You can name it My_Hunt, for instance.
Only three steps are necessary to make a Treasure Hunt. These steps are explained in detail bellow, but because of their simplicity, it could be more didactic if you had a try first. You can read the instructions after having a look at the generator.
Type the data in the corresponding text fields and text areas: Title of project, Author, Subject, Level, E-mail, Description, Keywords, Introduction, Questions, Resources, The Big Question, Evaluation, and Credits.
All the text fields (except Author, Subject, E-mail and Level) are optional, so those that are left blank will not appear on the generated page.
In the Keywords field you can type several words or expressions so that search engines can list your web page more accurately. The words and expressions you use must be separated using commas; for example: , whales, teaching, on-line exercises. Therefore, when the users look up the word Whales or the expression On-line exercises in a search engine, they will get a great deal of entries and, among them, they will probably find the URL of our Treasure Hunt page.
This image shows how an user has selected, by clicking on the corrresponding options, Arial as a font, brown as text color and white as background color.
If you want a color which is not available in the list, you can type its code. In HTML language each color has a code formed by numbers and letters. Click here to see a list of some of these codes.
If you want a font which is not available in the list, you can type its name in the correspondig text field. In the following drop down menu you can find a long list of the most popular fonts:
You have to be aware that a browser can only read the fonts that are installed in the user's computer. Then, what happens when a font is not available in the user's computer? The page appears with the browser's default font (generally, Times New Roman, Arial and Courier New in Windows, and Times, Helvetica and Courier in MAC O. S. Therefore, you should use those fonts that are more likely to be available in the visitor's operating systems.
Font size can also be selected from a drop down menu. By doing this, you change the normal text size; the other font sizes (the smaller one of the anchors and the big one of the title) will appear in a size proportional to the one you have chosen.
A background image can be selected so as to make the page more attractive and to increase the student's motivation. The page you are reading, for instance, has a background image.
In the same way as you paint or paper a wall, you can "paint" a page with an image. A browser usually makes a mosaic by repeating an image all over the background, so you needn't use a large image. In fact, the smaller the image is, the faster the downloading of the image will be in the browser. Speed is always a major concern, since visitors of your page could leave it if it downloads very slowly. Not all the images can be used as a background; for instance, a full detailed graphic of the Star Wars spaceship can take over the screen or make the text on the page illegible. The most effective background images are small and with textures, and they can be repeated so as to form a full background, offering a pleasant atmosphere at the back of the page.
You can insert images in all the sections of the Treasur Hunt page; this is worth explaining in detail. Since these images were placed in My_Hunt folder, to insert the images you simply have to type their file names with their extensions, and you can align them to the left of the paragraph, in the center (above the paragraph) or to the right of the paragraph.
We place the image named fingers.gif in My_Hunt folder, and we type "fingers.gif" in the Image text field. If it is aligned to the left, it will appear like this:
Next to all the textareas, you can see this button: , which is very important to design the page properly. With this button you can insert a line break. When you click the button once, you insert a line break in your text, and when you click it twice you can start another paragraph. An example:
After that, you must type: "3. When was the day of the inauguration? How many art works were there then? once.
Every time you click the button, we introduce the necessary code language (<br>), but you can also do it manually. The generated page will look like this:
In the "Resources" section you can introduce up to 15 URLs by filling in the Description texts fields and their corresponding URLs text fields.
We think that 15 URLs are enough in most cases, but you can add more URLs. Let us suppose you want to include the following link:
To do this you have to click the Link button in the "More links" section, and the following will appear:
You have to substitute the word "Description" by "Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). New York", for instance, and the word "link" by the corresponding URL: " www.moma.org".
Bold. When you click on it, this text appears: <b>bold</b>. You have to replace the word bold with the text you want to be written in bold. For instance, if you wish the word School to be written in bold, you must type: <b>School</b>, and this word will look like this: School.
Italic. When you click on it, the following text appears: <i>italic</i>. You must type your text between both tags.
Once you have made your project, you can select one of the following options if you want to change the default printing options:
Printing the text in the chosen color on a white background. If you choose this option, the text will be printed in the color you have chosen, and the background color will always be white, as it is the default browser color. But if you choose a light color text, it might be difficult to read.
Finally, you have to click the MAKE TREASURE HUNT button, you will be able to see the generated web page in the same browser window.
Don't worry if you can't see the inserted images on your page. You will see them when you save the page in your folder (My_Hunt), where the images are.
If you publish your Treasure Hunt page on the Internet, please send us your page URL so as to be able to link it from this page.