NetLessons Forms

The key to an effective NetLesson is timely feedback. The student must feel that they are in direct contact with the supervisor. There must be two-way communication between the student and the supervisor.  Preferably the communication should be immediate. Feedback must be provided as soon as possible after the students submits their 'quiz' answer. The best way to achieve the level of communication needed is via email.

There are a number of ways of setting up email communication. If the supervisor and student each have an Internet email account and the NetLesson is being conducted over the Internet the process is straight forward. It gets a little complicated if the students is engaged in a NetLesson on a school network.

If the school network provides individual students with school-based email accounts and the NetLesson is installed on the school Intranet, or the Internet the process is again relatively straight forward.

A problem arises if individual students do not have Internet email accounts. It should be noted that 'hotmail'-type accounts are not "Internet" email accounts in this sense. For the standard NetLesson structure to function the student must have direct access to an email "server". Generally this means they must have a personal Internet account through and ISP (Internet Service Provider).

The solution for school that wants to offer NetLessons but doesn't have a school email server is to use FrontPage Server Extensions. FrontPage acts as an intermediary between the students and the instructor. The complication is that you must "publish" your web page to an ISP that caters for Front Page Extensions. If your current ISP does not allow FrontPage Extensions you should contact the Aussie School House (ASH) group at: http://www.ash.org.au . ASH provides up to 10Mb of Web space for teachers and they allow FrontPage Extensions to be used.

Setting up a FrontPage Web Form

Launch FrontPage and go to File/New/Web.

For this exercise select One Page Web. You can add more pages later. At this screen you can specify where the Web will be stored on your hard disk. In this example the default is accepted.

Click OK. You have set up a location to store your Web files.

Having set up your Web go to File/New and select Page....

Select Normal Page.

Click OK.

For this example we will insert a simple Form onto the page. Go to Insert/Form/One-Line Text Box.

A blank Text Box is inserted. A typical NetLesson 'Quiz' uses this approach with one such box for each question.

Insert some text in front of the Text Box and move the Submit/Reset buttons down with the Enter key.

Right-click on the Form and select Form Properties... from the pop-up menu.

In the Send to section you have two choices. The File name: is the name of the file on your ISPs system where the information from the Form will be stored. In this example an email containing the information will also be sent to "me@email.com.au"

Because you are setting up for FrontPage Extensions, your page will not function properly on your own computer. Respond to warning messages on the assumption that you will be publishing to a FrontPage Extensions enables server and your page will work when uploaded.

Press the Preview button at the bottom-left of the screen to see how your page will look when properly published.

When you have finished writing your web page you must allow FrontPage to set it up as it needs to. You cannot simply FTP the files to your ISP and expect the FrontPage Extensions to function.

Go to File/Publish Web... and follow the prompts. At this point you must be connected to the Internet and be prepared to enter your Login and Password for your ASH account.