Computers: Developing Your School Website
By: Jayne Cravens
A Web site can be an effective part of your efforts to reach parents, students and the rest of the community about what's going on at your school. A Web site can leave a strong impression in a viewer's mind, so let it reflect the quality and communications materials you want to portray.
Your school's Web site should be easy to access and deliver information quickly, something everyone -- students, teachers and parents -- can use and understand.
The most important question to ask when designing your Web site is what do your audiences want out of the site?
Review information you want to provide and assess its need in the community, your student and teacher audiences. Think strategically about what and how you will post information.
Maintain commitment to posting accurate, timely information online. If people find that the information never changes, they will stop accessing your site.
Give administrators, teachers, parents and students opportunities to provide suggestions for the site, both online and off.
Determine your school's FAQs (frequently asked questions). The best person to ask is the one who answers your school's main phone line. What are the top 10 things people call for? Make the answers to these FAQs easy to find on your site; you may want to create a page specifically for them.
People don't like to read huge blocks of text on the Internet. Break up text into small paragraphs, and break up information into separate pages, as appropriate. For instance, break the school newspaper into one file per story, rather than putting them all into one big file.
Make sure each Web page on your site has certain basic information, particularly if it's a page you think people will print out. At the bottom of each Web page, I recommend the same information:
- Your school's name
- Postal address
- School main phone number
- "Main" e-mail address (with a link allowing the browser to send an e-mail message)
- The Web address/URL (with a link that goes back to the home page)
- A copyright notice (The material in this web site is copyright 2000 by SCHOOL NAME HERE, unless otherwise noted in the article. All rights reserved.)
Minimize graphics, and use them wisely. Pages should load completely in 30 seconds or less with an average modem. If you have a group of student designers who really want to strut some stuff (graphics, scripting, animation, etc.), then create duplicate pages -- one with minimal graphics, one with all the graphics they want; at the top of each page, provide a link to the duplicate page, so users can have the option of using the page they want.
Not everyone uses the latest versions of their Internet browsers. Design your site with such people in mind. For instance, if you have an online form, provide a link for those users who are not using a browser that supports forms.
Try to make every page accessible via two clicks of the mouse from the home page. Avoid information becoming too buried beneath other pages, which makes it difficult for the user to find.
Pages should link together as appropriate, not just back to the home page. Repeat some information from page to page--users may not be able to find it otherwise.
Set policies regarding how much student information will be available on your Web site and links to other sites from your school's site.
Create quality-control, maintenance and security measures: Who will review pages before they become public? Who will have access to the server to upload documents? How will the site be updated and maintained?
Do your Web site development in different stages—you can’t get all of the information up at once. Start with:
- FAQs
- Directions and a map to the school
- Schedules of school sporting and cultural events
- Information on school events for parents (open house, PTA/PTO meetings, etc.)
- List of school clubs and teacher sponsors and e-mail addresses, if possible
- List of PTO/PTA officers and e-mail addresses
- School lunch menus
- Recent student publications
- Most recent parent newsletter
- Message from the principal
- List of key school administrators and e-mail addresses, if possible
Later, your school could include:
- Directory of teachers, and e-mail addresses of each
- Web pages for each school club
- Official student handbook (attendance policies, dress code, etc.)
- School course catalogue
- Student art gallery
- Creative writing gallery
- Alumni information and activities
The above items could be broken down into groups: student-related, teacher-related, administration-related, and parent-related information. You could break down the content-gathering for the Web site similarly: students could be responsible for certain areas, just as they are with different pieces of the student newspaper, as could teachers, administrators and parents.
Various organizations within the school could be responsible for providing their own Web page design (the science department could develop and maintain a page of suggested science-related Internet resources). Make certain your standards for design are maintained. Finally, go not give everyone the ability to upload information to the Web server.
Jayne Cravens is president of Coyote Communications, www.coyotecom.com.
