Welcome to Navigate Powered by NIDES Applied Skills for Athletes!

Please note that the First Assignment is a requirement to be registered in the course.

Legal last name: / First name:
Other last name: / Home phone#:
Middle name: / Cell Phone #:
Student Email: / Parent or guardian email:
Other school attending:

Instructions: This assignment is intended to take approximately 5 - 10 hours to complete. It is worth 10% of your final grade for the course, so complete it carefully:

  1. Read each question carefully before answering
  2. Answer all questions to the best of your ability, and in your own words. Plagiarized assignments will not be accepted, and you will not be registered in the course.
  3. Take your time and explore all of the resources. You will receive a higher mark on your First Assignment if you include your learning from the readings and resources provided.
  4. When you have completed this assignment, return it as an attachment to an email to:

Office Use Only Date:
Mark:
Feedback

Welcome to the ‘first assignment’ for Applied Skills 11!

This course will focus on the technological skills it takes to build a website that showcases your athletic skills and talent to gain the attention of college or University level recruiters and coaches.

The following Applied Skills 11 learning outcomes will be addressed in this assignment:

❏use appropriate technologies in a variety of applied contexts

❏identify and evaluate the impact of technology on the way information is gathered, problems are solved and work is done

❏identify and apply appropriate knowledge, skills and attitudes when making choices and defending decisions

❏use appropriate criteria and standards to assess and evaluate products, services, systems and ideas

❏use appropriate multimedia and information technology in presentations

The first assignment for the course will get you started with thinking about what sort of things make a great website! In this course you will be responsible for building a website to showcase the work you complete throughout the course and it is essential that you have some knowledge of what makes websites interactive, informative and interesting!

Please read below for a rationale of why this course is important and what the goals of this ‘first assignment’ are:

This Applied Skills 11 course will focus on the use of technology as a means of assisting the student with creating career opportunities and achieving lifelong goals.
Specifically, students in Applied Skills 11 will design a personal website which will be used to prepare and promote themselves as student athletes to college and university recruiters. The website itself will be an extremely relevant tool to assist student athletes in communications with colleges and universities. The website will house important documents, videos and resources which are aimed at the student’s goal of combining their academic and athletic careers at the highest level.
Students in the course will research and utilize current marketing research to develop a website which gives them a competitive advantage over other student athletes. By applying fundamental concepts of website design, students will be able present themselves in an interesting and professional manner.
One of the greatest challenges that student athletes face in their recruitment of prospective colleges and universities is the question of how they can gain the attention of recruiters. With the increasing number of marketing and recruiting companies available to student athletes, many are turning to simply hiring professional companies to make the important connections with universities and colleges. This however, has some major drawbacks in that college coaches are being inundated with electronic correspondence from companies who represent thousands of prospective athletes. The simple fact is that coaches prefer the personal connection with the student athletes themselves. The development of a personalized website demonstrates that the student athlete has taken ownership and pride in their ambitions to play and learn at the college level. College recruiters place high value on student athletes who are self motivated, focused and disciplined. Personal websites demonstrate those qualities and provide coaches with important information in a very interesting and succinct fashion.
The First Assignment for Applied Skills 11 will assist the student athlete in exploring current marketing research pertaining to website design. The goal is to present yourself in a fashion that is interesting, pleasing to the eye and informative.

______

Part 1: Market Research

Read the following articles on the topic of ‘what makes a good website’ and take notes if you need to! These are not research articles but simply web articles. You may want to compare and contrast between the three articles to find some common ground. You also want to take into consideration your personal assumptions about ‘what makes a good website’ and check out what other ‘experts’ think is important for a good website.

#1:

#2:

#3:

Note: This article is a little more technical. The ‘techy’ part of this article might appeal to some students based on their current website knowledge.

______

Part 2: Synthesizing the Information--Article Summary

Choose ONE of the above articles to summarize. You summary is to be a solid paragraph in length (9-12 sentences) and reflect the ‘who, what, when, where, why and how’ of the article as well as any other interesting information and personal connections. You will need a topic sentence, introducing the author and article and you will need to reference the article in APA format at the beginning of your summary. If you are unsure how to do this, use this useful link to guide you through the process:
Make sure you avoid summarizing the point for or numbered lists by simply restating them. Go beyond this! Start with an overall summary and then work in what you believe are the most important parts of the articles as well as any parts you find unnecessary. Making a personal connection to the website you are going to build and beginning to think about your own ‘design strategy’ will be useful at this stage in the game.

______

Part 3: Finding What Works For You

Now it is your turn to find what works for you before you begin to build your website.

Find 3 articles or sources of information around building a website. Include a citation for each article or source you find. Critique and summarize each article/source in 2-3 sentences.

1.

2.

3.

From your research (you may use the articles that were given to you in this assignment or the ones that you found on your own), categorize and explain in detail at least 3 important factors that you discovered in designing an effective website? These could include things like; colour scheme, layout, photos/videos, graphics, links, menu styles, etc. Provide a point form list or 2-3 sentences on why you think these particular design elements are the most critical in building a website.

1.

2.

3.

From the readings and your own research, describe in a short essay, 3 design ideas (you will most likely use the design elements that you identified above and began to summarize already) that you will include in your own personal website for this course.
Your essay must include an introduction (topic sentence), 3 body paragraphs that focus around your 3 main ideas and a conclusion. Make sure each design element represents its own paragraph and is introduced, described and discussed thoroughly.

______

That’s it, that’s all! You can now submit your completed first assignment to the registrar @ and your teacher will contact you shortly with further instructions to get you started in the course!

1