Online Resources
Lexicon
If you don't understand the language of the natives, how can you possibly learn anything from them?
Glossary of Technical Terms
From 'analog' to '.zip', a comprehensive list of buzzwords and technical terms, including quite a few of those pesky acronyms.
Internet Lingo
Pick up the, like, y'know, slang here, man. Groovy? (Note: I mostly included this link for fun. If you actually use any of these words, people _will_ laugh at you.)
Theory
Get some ideas first, and lists of 'dos' and 'don'ts'.
Webmonkey on Design
Let your students catch you reading this site, and they'll think you're über-cool. It's part of Wired Magazine's webmonkey sub-site, an excellent web developer's resource.
Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design (May 1996)
Though a little dated, this particular article is a classic -- Jakob Nielson lists, in plain language, the 10 biggest 'don'ts' of web site design.
Top Ten New Mistakes of Web Design (May 1999)
Updated for 1999, this version includes commentary on some of the changes in HTML since 1996.
More Jakob Neilson
A whole slew of articles, reaching back to June of 1995. Reading all these won't make you a great web designer, but it couldn't hurt.
Tags
These pages are the Cliffs' Notes of the World Wide Web. Read over them to familiarize yourself with the basics of HTML tags. Add particularly helpful ones to your bookmarks for quick look-ups when you just can't remember a needed bit o' info.
HTML Quick List
A pretty standard list of HTML tags and their attributes, from Mikodocs, one of many HTML resources on the web.
HTML Tag List
The same sort of thing as the last link, only a little more descriptive. This page also happens to use pull-down menus for navigation, so if you're surfing the web without the benefit of a graphical browser, then it's not much good to you.
Overview of all tags
The short list, from WDG (Web Design Group).
Using Netscape Composer
From the Netscape web site, Composing and Editing Web Pages.
Not from the Netscape web site... this one's much better. It includes icons and much clearer layout and instruction.
Bells & Whistles (fonts, graphics, & the like)
This is what most beginning web authors scramble for -- the pretty pictures. A word of caution, though -- too many large images (file size, not actual size!) and no one will see your page because it will take too long to download! Remember, not everyone has access to a fast connection like the one in many schools and businesses. The pretty page that loads in 10 seconds at work can take a parent or student dialing in to a local internet service provider ages to download.
Pixel Place
Icons, images and web graphics, many free for download and personal or educational use.
Realm Graphics
Lots of textures and backgrounds, button images and icons. Also has some design sets, which you can use to build a themed site, with buttons and graphics and backgrounds and text to match.
Fonts for Freaks
Don't be scared off by the title of this huge font archive! Though some of the fonts here are a bit inappropriate for a classroom setting, many others are cool and stylish, and Tygre selects only shareware or freeware fonts for her lists, so you don't have to worry about copyright issues.
About Using Fonts
Before deciding to use all those nifty fonts you just downloaded from the link above this one, you should check out this essay from webmonkey about how to properly use fonts for best results!
A beginner's guide to animated GIFs
Once you know how to make basic images, you can create you own animated graphics.
Miscellaneous
140 colors, with accepted colornames and rgb hexadecimal codes
There are certain tags in HTML that let you control the color of things -- the background, the text... it even differentiates between links that have been visited and those that have not. To make sure that your pages are the same on all types of browsers, you should use the hexadecimal code instead of the color name, if you can. This page lists all the web-safe colors by both name and hexadecimal code.
HTML Special Characters
For those characters that you can't always get from a keyboard... there are a special set of codes that let most web browsers display special characters -- things like dollar signs ($), percent marks (%), and copyright symbols (©).
WWW Search 101
In case you don't find what you need in this list and don't know how to start looking for it, here's a handy tip sheet on searching the web. It explains how search engines work, the different kinds of searches, and how to make them work best for you.