Design
I designed this site as a way to show, my audience (teachers and administrators), my teaching qualifications and to get an insight to who I am as an educator including my teaching philosophy.
My goal was to create a portfolio website that highlighted my teaching experiences, my creative lesson planning, and my qualifications. I wanted to create a site that was easy to use in order for my viewer to access information quickly.
Since my site is a portfolio of my teaching experience my site’s home page includes a brief description of my self, my teaching philosophy, and what the site is for. My portfolio site includes pages that house my resume, letters of recommendation, evaluations, and lesson plans. In my blog I address aspects of my teaching philosophy and instructional development.
Usability
In order to make my site easy to navigate I used a horizontal navigation bar with tabs to all of the main pages. Some tabs included fly-out menus in which the viewer can navigate to a specific page from that parent tab. I also included hyperlinks which navigate the user to additional information of their interest. I also included a right hand navigation bar on the home page and blog that include widgets for my audiences convenience.
Accessibility
Accessibility of the site was addressed by using alternative text in order for screen readers to read in place of an image. I also used tags in each post in order for my viewer to navigate to information that they are looking for on my site.
Lauren Nixon 