How to do HTML   Many people believe that HTML must be difficult, and are convinced that it's not as easy as people say it is. This month, Kidspeak talks with some sixth graders from Kansas who attest to the fact that HTML really is that easy. We hope this story will orient the "HTMLaphobic" in you, and start you well on your way to making your own Web pages.   By Alicia M. Bartol SCR*TEC

ids don't magically learn HTML in their sleep, although sometimes we wonder, when we take a gander at their Web sites. Although we may have made goals to learn HTML, many teachers haven't investigated the mysteries of Hypertext Markup Language. The unknown seems daunting, especially considering the limited time teachers have to learn new skills. Given the upcoming summer months though, Kidspeak has set out to interview kids who can give us a few pointers. According to the kids, learning HTML is not as hard as it seems.        This month, Kidspeak interviewed students of General Bradley Elementary in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Many of these kids had a little computer experience previous to this year, in the form of basic keyboarding skills or safe-surfing knowledge. Since the students are all military dependents, their previous knowledge varies depending on where they were last stationed. Nevertheless, their teachers, Mr. Arnold and Mr. Griffin, had no problem teaching them basic HTML.

r. Griffin started it all, when he realized how easy HTML was. He said, "I figured it was so easy that our sixth graders could do it too. So I integrated it with science, social studies, and English." The kids said they were allowed to pick a subject to research in any one of these classes, and instead of writing a regular pen-and-paper report, they learned how to present their reports on the Internet without using a Web editor. A Web editor is a program like Front Page or Netscape Composer, which writes the HTML for you.        Rather than using a Web editor, the kids said they used a Text editor, such as Notepad or SimpleText. The kids said they used Notepad, since they were working on PCs. Macintosh computers will have SimpleText, so this might be the Text editor on your machine. Most word processing programs can serve as Text editors, as long as the program gives you the option to save a file as "text," "text only," or "ASCII text." You can check for this capability in the dialog box that you view every time you save a word processed document. As long as you have a program like this, and almost everyone does, you have the capability to write HTML.

he next crucial technological requirement is a Web browser, like Internet Explorer or Netscape Navigator. This is where you view Web pages like this one, which are saved onto a server, or pages that are saved onto your own computer's hard drive. In simpler terms, you always need a Web browser to view your pages, but you do not always need to have a Web server to view your own pages. You only need to have a server if you want your pages to be visible to the rest of the international Web community, or to be visible to you from a computer other than your own. You also have the option to save your HTML file to a floppy disk, so you can view it from any computer with a Web browser and a disk drive.

o start writing HTML, you'll need to learn a few basic tags. The students explained that tags are instructions to the Web browser to format the contents of the page. All tags are contained within the symbols called brackets, which we know as "greater than" and "less than" symbols, and most tags are paired. This means one tag gives the instruction to start the action, and one tag ends the action. For example, if you wanted a word to be bold, you would use a "<b>" before the word to turn the bold command on, and a "</b>" after the word to turn the bold command off. There are a number of basic tags such as this one that you can learn within an afternoon to be well on your way to Web authoring. Sean said, "our teacher helped us work on [tags] a week before [making the pages]. He helped us write it all down on a sheet of paper."

he students had no trouble remembering the tags after a little practice. Kenneth said, "I remember it all really. To make the letters bigger, you type in: '<font = a number from -7 to +7>.'"        The class also worked hard to find images for pictures and backgrounds that they could use in their reports. According to Mr. Arnold's class, this was the coolest thing about the whole project. However, since most people don't have graphic designers at hand to custom-create computer graphics, most of us get a lot of our images directly off the Web. This requires some patience though, as the students found out, because unless a site is made specifically to disperse copyright-free images, you have to ask permission to use Internet graphics. Melanie explained the process: "We'd go to a site, and we'd get pictures, and we'd ask permission to use them. Then we'd copy them and put them on our site and save them on our disk."

enneth gave us a quick how-to for getting images off the Web. Keep in mind that any image you copy off of the Web will have ".jpg" or ".jpeg" or ".gif" at the end of the filename. In Kenneth's case, he wanted to copy a background image, the pattern displayed in the background of any given page (this page has no background image). "For the background," he said, "you go to the background you want. Then click the right [mouse] button; save it onto the disk. Remember if it's a jpg or a gif. Go to your [HTML file], type in the [image's filename with tags], then save it. Then push refresh [back in your Web browser]."

ot all computers allow you to save an image by clicking the right mouse button, but it is still possible to take an image off a Web site for your own use. First, take a look at the commands available in the pulldown menus at the top of this screen (File, Edit, View, etc.). Pull down the "View" menu in the Web browser above. Then choose "Info," or "Page info." You will see that a split window appears with a list of all the images used in the Web page you are viewing. Go through the list in the top window and click on the image filename you want; try to find the filename of the www.4teachers red banner-logo image. Then, scroll down in the bottom window to reach the image itself. Double-click on the image, and if you want, save it by using the "File" pulldown menu. Always remember to ask permission to use the images you want to borrow for your own Web page. For an example of what a background looks like in a page, look at the USA map background in Mr. Arnold's contact page.

ll the students used the same method to put backgrounds and images on their reports. There are many places on the Internet that will allow you to use their images, and the kids at Bradley have included links to some of these. Melanie used two graphics for her online leukemia report, and she wanted to credit the contributing sites. She said, "We went to the [graphics] site, and we copied the logo, and we put it on our sites."        Images weren't the only thing the students wanted to find and use in their HTML projects though. Although most of their research was done in the library, many of the kids used the Internet for research. For some of them, they even found additional links to add to the end of the report, in case their readers want more information. Amie said, "I went to Webferret and got manatees Web sites." Webferret is freeware that queries search engines for you, but it isn't the only way students from Bradley search the Net. They also use Yahoo regularly.

indsey had yet another method to find sites of interest. "If there's a subject, we could do www.'whateveritis'.com,'" she said. This doesn't always work very well; for example, typing in "http://www.music.com" will send you to a semiconductor site. However, Lindsey's method works excellently for cable channels, like CNN or Nickelodeon, or for entertainment companies, like Sony or Disney. Since the kids openly admitted to being most interested in surfing for clothes, music, and movies, Lindsey's method makes a lot of sense. Teachers should be careful about encouraging this type of exploring however, since it doesn't always produce the best results.

ithin a couple of weeks, the sixth graders of Bradley had learned basic HTML tags, researched their topics, found images and backgrounds to put on their reports, and had everything from science reports to fiction stories up and running off of their school's Web server. With a little Net surfing, a visit to a basic HTML tutorial, gather some copyright-free images, and view other people's page layouts, you too can learn HTML. With this orientation, you are already well on your way to making a homepage for yourself, your classroom, or even your school.

Take a few minutes to read these basic HTML tutorials!

A few picks by the SCRTEC staff:   Case Western Reserve University's Introduction to HTML. This is one of the best HTML tutorials we've found, and you'll see why. It's easy to understand, it takes you step by step, and you can learn as much as you want. Put up a simple page today!   Mary Going's HTML Tutorial. This tutorial is meant to help "talented, creative, interesting people" gain the skills needed to put their ideas into the public forum on the Internet.   Carol Smith's Introduction to HTML. This is a comprehensive HTML tutorial from the University of Alberta. If you really want to understand some interesting details of basic HTML, you'll enjoy this resource.

Students interviewed for KidSpeak are nominated by teachers. Send nominations to the editor. Copyright. © 2002, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1998, 1997 ALTec, the University of Kansas