This note is to remind us of the structure of our information on the JuniorIOT website, and the way of work to keep it in good shape. We will update this information to apply new learnings.
Junior IOT runs on WordPress, with customized design
The JuniorIOT website runs in a WordPress environment, hosted by our sponsor JunstBetter. Technically the website consists of a few elements:
- Web pages, only two pages are defined:
- Main web page
- Blog page
- Theme, the saient theme is customized for us for font settings, color and other details.
- Content and translated content
- Menu definitions (translated version affects original definition)
- Extra CSS definition
- Extra custom script
- Plugins
These elements we do not change. At very limited moments we may make a central change, very carefully, and by Marco only. As a co-administrator, do not adjust the menu, design, settings, plugins and such.
Test web
http://junioriot.tully.justbetter.nl/ –> er is een pagina wachtwoord nodig om te bekijken. Daarnaast heb je een apart admin wachtwoord.
Content appears as main page and as blog articles
Main page content is added by editing the Main web page. However, this is heavily mixed with design details, so changes need to be avoided. The main page is also where the agenda is displayed.
The main page contains many design details for page layout, sometimes even color codes and style detail. We avoid edits to this page. If needed, make sure to make edits only from a full-screen browser, never from mobile. The editor has been quirky, resulting in deleted or duplicated content blocks.
Any other content exists as blog articles.
When editing the articles, make sure to NOT apply any formatting, just because you want to. In very limited cases, some design detail is added, for instance to add a design element to replicate what is displayed in a magazine in our article.
Stick to the WordPress style
To avoid creating a future labor-intensive workload, we do not apply formatting other than what is available in the WordPress editor. Do not change text color. Yes, we are GeekNerds, and we master HTML in all colors, so it is hard to constrain ourselves to the built-in H1..H6, Bold, lists, indents, images, media; all accessible through the editor menu.
We do not hard-code text in an image, just to work around these limitations. Adjusting such is labor-intensive, so we find a way to avoid future maintenance. We avoid dependency on any design elements outside our WordPress website. Surely our logo may be an image, but even then it often appears as an HTML element with text in the appropriate website style.
A warning: International Junior IOT domains and WP translation
The international domains are all hosted from the same WordPress site. The language selector is activated by the domain extension .nl or .org our visitor is using to access the website. We do not activate the language flag as the two mechanisms combined would be confusing.
Having this multi-domain and translation in place, the editing may lead to undesired results. Some edits may affect the ‘other’ website, so you will need to check the consistency.
With blog articles, the translation is about the content. It feels like you are editing a new article, only with similar url. Note: changing the url breaks the links in the other language.
With the main page, the translation can be done on a text-by-text basis, or by creating a copy of the full content, including design elements. We use the last option.
With the site menu, the translation can be done on a text-by-text basis, or by creating a copy of the full menu. We use the last option, resulting in a very different menu in the .org website. Changes in one need to be tested in the other.
Be aware: WordPress suppresses any content where no translation is available.
When to use english or dutch
In general, our dutch website will give the visitor an experience in dutch. However we will have some content in english without translation. This will be the case when the content originates from an external site in english. Also content may be in english when we mainly target our international community or our own back-office.
The english -and other language- website will not feature dutch-only content.
Writing style: friendly and active
Junior IOT aims to be a friendly place, inviting, inclusive, safe and warm. We serve a target group who may not like difficult words and sentence structures. So in our writing, we make things less hard to read (especially rewrite anything where you would want to use brackets) and, removing comma’s and sub-sentences, assure a friendly flow of information.
- Remember, people may not read your text at all
- They may quicky scan to get an impression
- Having a small bulleted list helps the public to focus their attention
- Headers, lists, images create a mode dynamic experience and help in the ease of reading
The writing style is personal, active, complete and somewhat short. When writing a long explanation, and you find yourself repeating words about that explanation, the repeating is a signal that you are adding helper structures to your text to explain the repeating of the text, creating more repetitions – write shorter.
We write the Junior IOT name with capitals in IOT for better readability. In the market it became a fashion to write IoT, IIoT, IoE and other variations. Our public may read the alternative writing IoT as LOT. As this IOT is part of our domain name it is important to have it read out without misinterpretation. The Junior IOT websites and publications use the IOT in capitals. We write a space between Junior and IOT.
Writing mode: live edit versus non-published materials
In the spirit of keeping things simple, we can write-and-publish incrementally. This allows our visitor to see the content grow while we are still working on the pages.
Use header images
Our pages have an attractive (usually not-detailed) header image. Slide mode, center attached.
References to other sites, and copyrights
We are especially respectfull to other people’s work.
- For external text about Junior IOT we in general assume we can copy this onto our website, unaltered, with a source reference link.
- Governmental materials, funded by public money, we can quote with a source reference link.
- Teaching materials created for other peoples work, we only link into, never copy onto our website.
- If there is a need to embed images, always confirm these are free to use. You can google search images that are labelled for re-use.
- Avoid using images from external source for decoration purposes, instead we use our own pictures.
Categories: a structure for Junior IOT educational content
An article can be associated with of one or more categories, listed by ‘slug’ name:
Generic categories:
- blog – anything we want to show to the public
- organization – zakelijke dingen
- shop – listing the prices for our products, kits, workshops
Publication dates – adjustments to avoid internal pages getting displayed alongside public pages.
- keep the actual date for anything public
- date is anything in the year 2002 for internal vakdocent related items
- date is anything in the year 2001 for sponsor related items
- date is anything in the year 2000 for stichting and BV related items
- date is anything in the year 1999 for other organizational items
Educational content, choose these categories:
- labs – individual labs and lessons
- teacher – teacher instruction with each lab or lesson
- workshop – a workshop (one learning event) can be booked, exists of one or more labs or lessons
- series – a selection of lessons and labs joined to build a learning experience e.g. for a school
- agenda – planning details for a specific school, class, date to run a series of lessons
- challenges – projecten en challenges, bestaande uit een serie lessen en labs, mogelijk reeds inclusief specifieke plaats en tijd
- goals – for learning goals, we refer to the SLO numbering of ‘kerndoelen’
For documentation spanning across these different types of content, we separate the different content sections into separate pages. We use text links to connect the pages.
In near future we may differentiate between the different learning levels. All our current labs are mostly ‘introductionary’ workshops. The next level up will be ‘skilled’, and the next level is ‘advanced’. This is not yet implemented in our structure.
The older content on the Junior IOT website has been created as-it-happens. Such existing content will need rework.
Be aware that adjusting the category slugs or translations may break existing links.
Side note on categories: school or institute’s requirements
It helps to review the need of an educational institute in the broader context to help us structure our content. In this, we recognize the following hotspots in the learning-and-preparation line.
- Defining the vision and mission for your educational organization, and more specifically for the educational program
- For the specific educational program, find which learning goals need to be addressed
- Indicate which learning subjects will achieve these learning goals, define students abilities and budget
- Select learning material, being the lessons and labs series,
- Learning material contains for each individual lesson and lab:
- lessons- and lab instructions, student material
- teacher support material, for teach-the-teacher
- Make an agenda: location, teacher selection, students class, time schedule
- The teaching:
- do the instruction sessions, perform the labs and workshops; create plan- and progress slides for each teaching meeting
- check students progress, run exams, final labs or project presentations
For these different steps, we separate the different content sections into separate pages. We use text links to connect the pages.
