In this blog post, we will look at various School’s websites  and discuss why these websites are either poorly  or well-designed.

The first website I came across was Dovecot Primary School’s website.

This is a well-designed website which takes into consideration both adult and child users. The bright colours used throughout the websites makes it attractive and  child friendly. A study conducted by Boyatzis and Varghese in 1993 and further studies undertaken in 2001 and 2003 showed the relationship between colour preferences and pupil’s performance.  The studies undertaken proved that bright colours such as yellow and greens increased student’s performance.

In addition,  the texts style and font used throughout the website makes it parent and child friendly. The text is clear and easy to read thus allowing both children and parents to access the information. In addition, the website contains navigation buttons on a sign post which is different from the normal drop down menu at the top of the page which we usually see on websites.  This adds to the child friendly  interface. Furthermore,  the use of the noticeboard allows parents, pupils and teachers to quickly stay up-to-date with the latest information from school without having to search the whole website.

Furthermore, the website provides a language option which allows parents and pupils who are non-English speakers to access the information in their preferred choice. I believe this is useful tool to have on all websites as it makes the information accessible to everyone.

The Dovecot Primary School’s website also contains a kid zone (shown below). This contains various activities and games pupils can use to enhance their learning. I believe this is a great way to get pupils to study at home and keep up to date with the topics they learn in school. It also allows struggling pupils to practice topics they have struggled with.

In addition, the website has a section where teachers can upload pupils work and topics they are currently studying in class (shown below).  This allows parents to view what their child has been learning and doing at school. I believe by doing this, it makes parents feel more involved in their child’s learning.

It also allows has a section where pupils can contribution ideas of how to improve the website.  I believe this is a great way of getting children more involved with their school and makes the website more personal to them, thus becoming more wiling to use the website.

A poorly designed website I came across was Beckford Primary School as shown by the picture below.

The reason I believe this is a poorly designed website is because the website is aimed at parents and not parents and children.  Although the website contains different website links for children, it is not very child friendly as shown below. Beckford Primary School could have made this better by including a section which allows pupils to have a discussion about a weekly topic or provided different activities for different year groups, just like Dovecot Primary School (mentioned above).

Although this is a poorly designed website, it still provides the necessary information to parents and keeps parents up to date with what their child is doing in school.

In this blog post I will discuss the benefits of badges to both teachers and pupils. But first let’s have a look at what a badge is. The video below explains what a badge is.

What is a badge?

Now we shall look at the benefits of badges to pupils and teachers.

Benefits of Badges to Pupils:- 

I believe in order for learning to take place it has to be meaningful. This relates to Piaget who stated children learn best through ‘understanding and responding to physical experiences within his or her environment.’ Badges are a great way for pupils to own their learning. It allows pupils  to customise their learning  by providing pupils with a choice of badges to achieve. This motivates and encourages pupils to work towards their chosen badge.  This relates to Skinner’s theory of  Operant  Conditioning (video below explains what Operant Conditioning is) whereby the child is motivated to repeat the good work in order to obtain the next badge.

In addition, badges celebrate pupil’s achievements and inform pupils that they have learnt a new skill or have met a goal. I believe, it is essential that pupil’s achievements are celebrated in order to motivate and encourage pupils to carry on learning.  According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, motivation is also a basic need before any learning can take place.

Furthermore, I believe using badges creates competition between pupils thus helping pupils to motivate and encourage one another to complete the next target in order to receive the next badge.

Benefits of Badges to Teachers:- 

As a teacher myself, I can see many advantages of using badges in the classroom.  Below I have listed several advantages of the benefits of badges to teachers:-

1. Badges provide a personalise touch to the classroom. Teachers have the ability to create badges for tasks that children need to complete. For example, teachers can create goals for the day which pupils need to achieve in order to obtain a badge.
2. Badges constantly remind pupils of the goals they need to achieve.
3. Badges can be used as an assessment tool and a way of monitoring pupil’s progress. This enables teachers to identify pupil’s strengths and weaknesses and provide tailored badges with targets for pupils to achieve.

In future practice, I will definitely be using badges as a means to motivate pupil’s to achieve their targets. Badges are a great way to promote and encourage fun learning.

The article below provides an insight on whether or not badges are useful in education.

Article: Are Badges Useful in Education?