Educational Global Community Site

Expanding FaceBook to reach millions of classrooms worldwide, my site will connect students through multimedia platforms in order to share information about world culture, history, and current events. Online networking will empower children through personal expression and foster a love of learning, a competency in technology, and tolerance for people around the world.

Since the users are students who may or may not have a lot of experience with computers, the site will be simple, visually clean and easy to navigate. Inspired by the earth itself, the color scheme will be mostly white with monochromed ocean blue. There will also be earth-green highlights. Ocean blue is a primary color, basic and soothing, which I hope will focus but not distract the user from the site's content.

Teachers will facilitate student learning by connecting classrooms around the world to collaborate on lesson plans and exchange information. Students will create individual profiles about themselves, then link their pages to other students in their classroom. Based on the class curricula, teachers will find classrooms around the world to collaborating in the learning experience. Soon, classrooms around the world will form educational networks to share text, picture, and video-based emails that are focused around the academic goal. Like other online networking sites, communities grow virally and classrooms expand worldwide.

The menu bar at the top of the site will host 5 main options: HOME, MY WORLD, CONNECT, SEARCH, and HELP. When one scrolls over each of the main options, a sub-menu will slide down with further options:
HOME: Login, News, About, Register
MY WORLD: My Profile, My Class, My Networks, My Videos, My Pictures
CONNECT: Email, Video, Pictures
SEARCH: Person, Class, School, Country, Subject
HELP: Tutorial, Lesson suggestions

What creates a well-designed Web site?

A good website clearly conveys its purpose through visual representations. Graphic elements (shape, color, typeface) and layout (alignment, size and color contrasts) powerfully effect the tone of the html canvas. Children's sites often appropriately feature colorful and motifs with user-friendly navigation. A news-content website may be graphically simplistic, focusing visitors to the text-heavy content.

For www.2advanced.com, it's graphic design appropriately reflects its purpose: Wow me with Flash. From the instant I loaded the site, I was digitally transported into a futuristic, fantastical environment of dynamic imagery. The colors are electric blue, neon green, and fire-orange set on black, eye-catching and titillating to the visitor.  In contrast to the explosive graphics, the text is subtle and small in size. Information is aligned to the left and the bottom, on the sidelines as not to compete with the stunning design.  Expansive navigation menus are discretely embedded within a single word, as if avoiding the visitor. In fact, I was on the website for over a minute before I actually read over the text; I was way too engrossed in the Flash effects and SciFi backgrounds. 

I soon learned that text and navigation was of little importance: 2Advanced is a multimedia/tech design company. It isn't important for the visitor to read, but rather enjoy the site's Flash environment and tech wonder. Successfully, the website design speaks for itself.