Before assessing what makes a good school website it came to my attention that I was unsure about the qualities that define this, after reading blogs written by the CSI media group ‘Schools Cool’ and ‘school website’ by Alta Justus it came to my attention that the same key elements were underlined…
- Easy navigation: parents able to get back to the home screen effectively and are the key elements directed to in a sidebar.
- Modern design: must be attractive and simple for all users and must sell the school to new prospecting parents.
- E-commerce: things such as school dinners, trips, and donations should be available to parents online saving time and effort for both parents and staff
- VLE available: these are fairly new and are being introduced into school to incorporate school and home learning allowing children to extend and recap knowledge as well as give parents an insight as to what is being learnt at school
- Audience segmenting: both parents and students use school websites and it should be clear as to which segments they are looking for
- Updated: Calendars, SATS timetable, lesson topics and other important information should be kept updated regularly.
- Multi-platform / user-friendly: parents are mostly likely to access these websites not just through computers but through their phones or tablets and the website should be accessible through these devices (maybe even having links to other social media for a range of access.
From these, I was able to look are some websites and gain an insight as to how effective they were and how they could be improved.
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Site 1: St, Mary’s catholic primary school
It is clear to see that this website has many elements which incorporate a good site. The navigation is simple and when looking for specific curriculum areas in a year group they are all linked nicely to help inform parents of what their children are studying. As well as this they have also embraced the ideas of E-commerce by using ‘Parent pay’ to get parents to pay for school dinners. However, there is no blogging and parents cannot see what their children are physically been doing throughout the week, therefore, lacking in parental involvement. As well as this the website is directed fully at prospecting and current parent rather than any elements towards the pupils. Therefore these are things that should be addressed. Furthermore, there are no links to social media and as a result of this, parents who want to gain additional information through different means cannot. This can be argued as both a good and bad thing due to information all being in one area but has a lack of security with branching out to other platforms.
Site 2: http://www.rutherfordhouseschool.co.uk/
since this school is linked to our assignment i thought it would be interesting to look at this site too. There is a clear indication of the split of parental information but there is not much to do with the children again. this is something that I think is a common theme within school websites and would assume that other VLE platforms are existant and not linked within these websites. Again there is also a very modern desing that works well on all devices such as iphones and tablets, allowing users to use them whereever they are. as well as this they have also embraised social media such as twitter to provide infomation on school menues giving parents the options to commnet on what there chidlren are eating. lastly the website also offers lots of unpading infomation within callander form keeping everyone up-to-date.
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After assessing these websites, I came to a realisation that there could be links between the importance of parental involvement with these websites and their child’s learning. From this, I did some research and came across an article written by Paula Hundley. The main aim of her article stated that
“School websites supports community outreach and helps families establish home environments to support their children as students.”- http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ989780.pdf
This is something I feel is crucial to a successful website as it builds a bridge between schools and home communities. Children spend their lives between these two places and it’s important that they are linked closely for the best experience for the child. Therefore if even given the opportunities to support the school website this is something I would find myself focusing the work around.
Upon some additional reading, I found it interesting that Carmel Maio-Taddeo had made a connection between the effectiveness of the school website and the implementing of computing into their curriculum. She states after her experiment that
“Those websites that were categorised as experts did not necessarily display a level of expertise in all areas related to ICT integration and ICT leadership, but often demonstrated specific expertise in an area or two”- http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ834150.pdf
This is something I find extremely interesting that while those who have an effective website the creators have knowledge in certain aspects of computing that others do not and this correlates the effectiveness and the amount of computing in the school. Therefore I think it’s important that we build on not just our fundamental skills for ICT but also branch out our subject knowledge.
You raise some excellent points here. Do make sure you include hyperlinks for any readings.
Hi Helen would you like the compulsory reading link attached to here as well?
Jamie this is a great blog I enjoyed reading this. You mentioned that the St Mary’s didn’t have blogging and parents couldn’t see what their children have been doing. Would you provide access to blogs and what resource would you use?
How can we convince parents and staff to engage in blogging. Maybe if we set up a blog for us as teachers once we are in school next we could show everybody how it works for us. Sharing ideas and resources that we are using for instance.