Navigating the Polar Science 2006 Web Site: Updating Your Profile for Your Personal Web Page

As a participant in this project you can have your own personal web page if you want. This is where you will put the information that you want the other project participants to know about you.

It is very important to keep in mind that many people will be able to read the project web pages, even if they don't participate in the project themselves. The message areas can only be read if you have a login, but the web pages can be read by anyone.

While it can be fun to get to know each other a bit while we're working on this project together, it is important that you do not give out information that will allow others to identify you. Your school will have privacy rules that are part of your Computer Acceptible Use Policy. Be sure to discuss these with your teacher.

What kinds of things should go on your personal profile page?

grade
subjects you like
special interests or hobbies
future plans

Be creative, but also be safe!

You can always come back to your personal profile web page and make changes. You can find it in the Account section.

Using HTML Coding to Format Your Personal Web Page

When you add information to your personal profile web page, you will need to use HTML coding to tell your web browser how you want the information displayed. This isn't as hard to do as it sounds! In fact, there are probably experts in your class who can help. These pages aren't meant to be fancy; after all they only contain basic information.

Look at the samples above.

You will see that all the html codes are in these brackets < >.

<h3> is a heading
<p> is a new paragraph
<br> starts a new line (line break)
Can you guess the symbols for bold and italics?

Here are some basic examples:

<h1> This is a big heading. </h1>

<h2> This is a smaller heading. </h2>

<h3> This is a smaller heading yet. </h3>

This sentence contans text <b> that is bolded. </b>
This sentence contans text <i> that is in italics. </i>

Usually one set of brackets goes before the text, telling the browser to start showing the text in a certain way, e.g. <h3>. Another set of brackets containing a / goes at the end of the text, telling the browser to stop showing the text in that way, e.g. </h3>.

This is how headings, bold and italics work. Paragraphs <p> and new lines <br> don't need the second set of brackets to tell the browser to stop.

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