Along with many other jobs, redesigning the school website is one of my tasks over the next few weeks and months. I aim to make a start now, then adapt and amend as I discuss it with parents, children and staff once I start at school in September. Can I design a website without knowing much about the school beforehand? I think it is possible. I know what I want to achieve with it, so I can lay the foundations at least.
The hardest part for me is deciding where everything goes. Do school newsletters go on the website or the VLE? What about photos from that trip we’ve been on? What goes on both? Who manages the website? As much as possible, I want to type/post once and for it to appear in several places. Linking via embeddable features and RSS feeds will help to reduce this. For example, if we post on our blog, it will appear automatically on Twitter and via RSS feed to our website and VLE.
I set up the website at my old school (www.hulbertjunior.co.uk) a few years back and I was very pleased with it. It did the job, it promoted our school. In the area are a number of similar schools and we wanted to stand out and it worked as a few children came to look at our school as a result of the website. We used Joomla and I will probably do so again, partly because of ease of use. I have considered WordPress but I see that more as a blogging tool than a whole website.
So what do I need?
The ‘boring/important stuff’ – I need prospectus-type information. I want to have details of the school uniform, homework and information about the lunch menu. Exciting? Not really, but it’s the kind of stuff that parents need to be able to get hold of, so that’s going on there.I might try and jazz it up a bit, but it’s needed.
Newsletters – I’d love to move towards a reduced-paper school. We won’t get paper-free for a few years yet, but putting newsletters, policies and other such documents online will be easy to do. There will always be someone that forgets to download it or doesn’t have internet access so paper is needed sometimes, but I bet we can reduce it by 90%. Hopefully this can be updated by office staff too and once they see how easy this is to do, there shouldn’t be an issue. Children’s homework/spelling sheets can go online, probably on the VLE as they’ll be next to links and activities.
Pictures – The VLE will have pictures. Tonnes of them. With comment boxes. I don’t think I want comments on the website, I’m happy for some photos to go on there to showcase our adventures and experiences, but we don’t need comments too. Putting pictures on the website gives it a friendly appeal and we are a friendly, welcoming school. Yes I will be using pictures of children and yes, I’ll be following our rules about that too. Maybe we can include photos of staff too although it’ll probably end up with drawings instead as quite often adults don’t like their photo being online, except on Facebook of course!
Learning – I want to showcase some work on the website, not everything like on the VLE, but great examples that we can show to others that do not have access to the VLE.
Blogs – We’ll be blogging and tweeting from September, so these will be fed to the website in a number of ways to help link together our ideas and experiences. We’ll get a twitter plguin too so that can feed directly to the website as well.
Useful Links – These will be in the VLE too as I want to make them useful and relevant to the learning, but the general links that are useful to everyone such as e-safety, will be on the website too. Maybe embedded so it looks fancier, who knows.
Other bits – We’re going to have a google map so people can find us and a visitor count to see if people have found us. A CEOP panic button is always useful to ensure children are safe online too.
So what do you think are the essentials for a good school website? What does yours look like? Would you change it if you could?
May I highly recommend you reconsidering using WordPress MU as the platform. Lots of benefits – easy to update and can update from any computer online, lots of plugins, using RSS feeds so it can email parents with updates, lots of different themes. Takes a while to set up, but very powerful when it’s up and running.
I built my school website using this platform. It took a year or so to become part of the school and to be used regularly, but now it’s really alive and kicking. Check it out: http://sonningcommonprimary.co.uk/. It’s had around 400,000 page views since launch 2.5 years ago.
From a design point of view, consistency is so important. I can’t stand different fonts and changing colours.
Getting the children to blog learning updates is always a winner too: http://sonningcommonprimary.co.uk/yeartwo/2010/05/10/year-two-election/
Our most popular section, apart from the front page rolling news, is the gallery. Parents love photos, and videos.
I love updating our website, but it can be very time consuming at times. Although teachers have logins to update their own sections, I often step in to help people who are having problems with photos etc. I guess the important thing is to not allow the website to impact teaching and learning. I haven’t been very good at this this year.
I’m looking forward to seeing what you come up with over the next few weeks. Please keep us updated! 🙂
I started our school web out of interest to teach myself webdesign.I needed a project and our shool didn’t have a site.It started as a hobby but is now an important aspect of our school.I do think the whole image of a school is judged by its website.
But now I am expected to manage the site even though I do it in my own time. I have tried repeatedly to get other staff members to help to keep it up to date but its an uphill battle. We have a twitter app on the homepage to give out current news but I can’t get anyone to add a quick ‘tweet’ about the football match or visit to the museum. Why won’t they do it? Very frustrating.
I have shown staff repeatedly how to update the embedded google calendar. I have set them up wikis and blogs embedded into the main website to add information about their classes but they just won’t add information so it always falls to me to update and I dont always have the information I need.
When the work falls on one person it is definately a chore but most teachers are reluctant to assist. On the other hand how many professional school websites do you see that are out of date because the company has not been fed the information they need to publish?
So I continue to publish our site for free mainly because the kids love to see their work online but I can’t help feeling taken for granted at times.
What would happen if you stopped? Always worth giving it a go! I do know what you mean though