Once you have set up a GitHub account, we will help you make a copy of the repository on Amaranth’s account for the website template that you want to use for your course. This is called forking the repository. After you do that, you will have a complete copy of all the files that create the entire template website. This is now yours to edit; you play around with it while leaving the original alone. For example, you can begin typing over the placeholder text for the title of the website. We’ll give you a tour of the various places in the repository that hold files that you will edit to make the website specific to your course. Once you have finished making changes for the day, you will request a merge with the repository in Amaranth. This process is called submitting a ‘pull request.’ When we accept your pull request, the changes you made will be merged and the website hosted from Amaranth’s repository will reflect the changes you made.
Just as you did, your students will also create a GitHub account and fork the repository from Amaranth’s GitHub account. Since they will make their repositories public, you will be able to see any changes they make. Each student will create their own folder and fill that folder with their images and a text file with the content of their page of the website. They will not make edits to any other part of the website. We recommend that students only submit a single pull request when they have finished making all changes.
To understand the basic elements of a website and its pages, you and your students will become familiar with the basics of coding language. Fortunately, this really means only learning a few special characters in order to generate features such as headings, italics, image captions, and footnotes. This simplified coding language is called markdown.