I have worked the past couple of weeks on getting prepared to distribute a survey to teachers throughout the state of Iowa. Part of that work included visiting school websites and collecting teacher emails. With the help of a friend, I ended up collecting approximately 4,000 emails from 140 different schools. As you can imagine, the look and feel of those school websites varied greatly. My experience visiting those websites brought forward the following issues.
When I visited websites, I often wondered what the purpose of the website was. I would guess that the purpose each school had for its website would explain some of the differences between websites. Most of the websites seemed to fit into one of two categories.
Static repository of information-These websites were obviously updated or changed very infrequently. They contained forms and various resources about the school. This would by far be the larger category.
Fluid information source-These websites were updated frequently, and they contained current news about the school. Some included videos, pictures, and even twitter feeds.
This post isn't intended as a criticism of schools, but rather as a conversation starter. As a school, you need to decided where to spend your time and resources. Keeping an up to date website certainly takes time. With that in mind, I'm going to end with a list of potential reasons to invest in updating your website and a list of the common problems I found on websites.
Why invest time to keep an up to date website?
- Your website is the first place outsiders see when they look for information about your school. This includes potential employees, new families, and community partners.
- Your website can serve as a great way to share all of the positive things happening in your school with community members.
- The school can control the information on their website, and it can be a great way to address challenging issues.
- Members of the school community do want to be able to visit your website as a one stop information warehouse.
- Outdated information! This was extremely common.
- Broken links were also quite common.
- Lack of information-It was difficult to find information and contact emails for staff members.
- Information that was challenging to access-Most community members will be frustrated if a click doesn't get them to the information they need.
Visit your own website and click around on various resources. What message does your school website send?
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Hey Nick,
Reading this post reminded me of exactly where our district website was even less than one yer ago. I honestly wish I had taken screenshots of the previous version we had put up with for so, so long. One of the first things we decided to tackle last year was the district’s website. We were a stellar example of example #1 above. For a district our size (11,000 students — 26 schools) this would be no small undertaking.
For reference, the URL is: http://www.sjsd.k12.mo.us
My main influence on this project? => Swing for the fences. Go from static city… straight to an entity less defined as a “website,” and more as a “web platform” in my opinion. I wanted not only a website for the district as a whole, but also an online hub for each of our 900 teachers that was flexible, capable of being a comprehensive “home” for their class(es), and ultimately, a public-by-default, interactive portal into the daily learning in our classrooms. I’m not going to be disingenuous and let on that this was a small task by any stretch. In fact, we endured some significant internal friction along the way.
That said, we emerged from the initial phase of this process in much, much better shape that most of us even thought possible. In one summer plus one month, we went from a website edited and maintained by 3 or 4 individuals… to a much more dynamic hub edited by 900 individuals. This is a massive change. Looking back, it is hard to even imagine where we were last year.
Although we are far, far from where we’d like to be in time, we have taken a massive step into truly engaging our community is the daily happenings of our classrooms. Scanning the site, you’ll see the vast majority of staff with pages that go far, far beyond the detail of the former site. Why? 900 editors vs. 3? That’s pretty simple to me. And yet, we have so far to go. The number of staff truly putting it all on the site as a true “public educator” for all to see… just a few. And yet, we DO have them. We have truly just headed down this path in an organized way.
Our staff gained access to their section of the website after school began this past September. After the coming summer, I’m betting we see a massive jump in engagement across the board.
Website, web platform, CMS, LMS, flexible hub for all of the things we may already be doing online… and all of those we may do in the future? It’s been a lot of work, but we’re ready for some big growth at this point. I think far too few school systems pay the requisite attention to the web presence they project.
My goal? A windows into each and every classroom in two years. Perhaps that can’t ever be done with 100% fidelity. However, I’m shooting for that goal. When the wider staff become more comfortable with the social aspects of the platform, we’ll grow by leaps and bounds.
In summary: the school/district web presence need not be a static poster to be changed infrequently, or as a defense of changing times. Instead, with the tools available in 2012 and beyond, this is an opportunity to truly become what so many of us say we are: public educators.
Sean
Sean,
Thanks for sharing! I also have witnessed many websites that are maintained by one or two individuals. In the end, that generally means that little is ever changed on the website. Adding participants CERTAINLY adds value. It would be really interesting, and likely very sad, to study that condition of most school websites.
Nick
A mother enrolled her two daughters in Sioux Central at the start of this school year. She came up to me a few weeks after school started and told me she chose our school because of our web site. She said, “Of all the schools in the area, it looked like you guys know what you are doing.” So, hey, school web sites can make a difference with our public.
Unfortunately, many schools don’t realize the power of a great website! It is great to see your facebook and twitter link on your homepage.
Nick