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.