Small projects ideas to teach beginners web developent using ASP.Net

Question

I asked from few weeks ago this question:

How can I teach a beginner to write ASP.NET web applications quickly?

And i got some good answers but i liked the answer which tell me to make some small projects with them (me with the beginners)

So i decided to collect some small websites ideas to do with them (i do a part then they complete or show them some hard parts and they follow)

But i faced 2 problems hope you help me solve.

1- Couldn't get enough good ideas for ASP.Net websites to make with them.

2- If i want to make them train on using HTML websites created by the web designer to make it dynamic using ASP.Net, where to find just HTML websites, or there is a better idea to teach them this part?

You may ask, whats exactly the level i hope they reach?

I want them to be Very good in ASP.Net, HTML, and familiar with JavaScript and CSS.

And the most important thing i want them to be a good searchers, means they got a problem and they Google the right way, and solve. "i think this will gain by time", but this is an important part, because i don't want them to say "we can't do this :("

May be i am asking for too many things, but i just hope general help so i can go further with them.

Answer 1

How about a sample time entry app.

User logs in to key his time for the week.
Admin user can approve time.

Reports can be made for summaries, approval, etc.. to give programmer exposure to reports. Login / Roles is always important to understand Time Entry gives you database interaction.

Answer 2

A simple informational website for a business or store. This should include a contact us form. That should be good practice.

Answer 3

A simple e-commerce application is a good project, as it exposes the students to a number of issues:

• Security
• Database integration
• Transactions
• Session management
• Design and usability

Answer 4

Use your brothers interests. If one brother likes Football, have him put together a fan site for his favorite team. Another brother likes fishing, well, you get the point.

There are two main benefits with picking topics this way:

1. They are already subject matter experts and can concentrate on learning the technology instead of the subject and the technology.
2. Hopefully they pick something they are passionate about and this will add to their desire to learn the technologies.

Answer 5

If your interests are in TV shows or movies or something similar that one can collect on DVDs, building a simple CRUD web app to update a database should be a fairly simple application that will cover some basics like DB design and manipulation, AJAX if you want to send the requests without a full postback, and is something rather common in enterprise applications so it may be very useful.

The year the DVD came out, who wrote and directed what is on the discs, genre of the material, length, stars, extras on the DVD and many other things could go into the DB if one wanted to set up a library like system for an add-on that could be interesting in some ways.

Answer 6

E-Commerce is a great solution, as other people have suggested. Or a portfolio web site would be even easier. Also, a picture sharing web site might work out well for them (family members could log in and upload, too?)

I would also add you should use the visual (design) mode in visual studio for the best effect. And then show the HTML it generates after the page is run/compiled. That way you cover for the people who are more visual learners and get into the code later. But I'm sure you were already going to do that :)

Answer 7

A good way to learn how to work with ASP.NET is to take a web template and start making it into a functional website.

For example, if you download this template you can see that it's a pretty straight forward business style site. Home, Products, Downloads, Services, About are the main sections. The template also has a search form and a contact form. These are all pretty good places to start learning how to create a site.

First thing, create a masterpage from this template. This is where you'll learn how to tear apart someones HTML and where to start placing content Templates and to start thinking about what can be a user control or reused (main menus, footers, sidebars controls etc.)

Next steps would be do go ahead and flesh out the folder structure of the site and dive in making the those default pages for each section. A learner will quickly see how a site is created from a master page and learn the little quirks of images and stylesheets and how to get around those as you dive through folder structures.

Now it's your choice. Pick a section and start having them dive into it. Products would give you a way to use a database, querystrings, forms, etc. How to pull data, how to display it and how to save it. Downloads would be a place where you could learn how to manage content for a user. What little admin tools a site would need to manage it. Services and About can be CMS driven pages. Once again data driven, but still different from the Products section. The contact forms would give them the option of leaning about using Email from inside of a .net application.

Now once you get your learner working on this, they might actually end up with a pretty usable site/product that they could actually sell or reuse in a 'for real' project. Take your time teaching them, go slow on each section and I'm sure you'll get some good input back from your learner.

Hope this helps you.