Sometimes I should just stop and let things roll as they are, but I do find it difficult. Recently I made a proposition to the Head that I would be willing to get involved with the update, modernization and maintenance of the School Website. Whether this turns out to be a good or bad idea, only time will tell. The Head loved the idea though!
Although usually aesthetically pleasing, a school site has so much more potential
than is generally used. As well as this, there is outdated information and the
photos rarely get updated. A site would get more views if the
information was updated on a more regular basis.
After viewing so called "award winning school websites", I was not entirely impressed and realised that the focus was generally on image rather then content. I believe that a site should be aesthetically pleasing, yes, and easy to navigate. However, it should also be regularly updated and it should aim to focus on three areas:
1.
Making the current website a better advert for the
school (both to current and potential parents)
2.
Improving communication in school-related matters
between teacher-pupil, teacher-parent and pupil-parent
3.
Widening the use of technology to facilitate teaching
and learning across the school curriculum
Some ideas I came up with to help in these areas are as follows:
·
Password protected links to class and subject based
websites. There are currently many of these already in use, but it would be
much better to have access to all of them from one location.
·
A drive to produce departmental/class websites as
platforms to implement technology in the classroom as well as communication.
·
A weekly News Bulletin done in video format, as well
as paper based format. I believe this would get viewed a lot more than the
current bulletin and the pupils could run it. Any news could also be pushed
automatically to parent’s computers, smart phones or iPads.
·
A link to Green/Environmental Awareness Information, videos and
resources.
·
Downloadable, pupil-written iBooks. Why not make full
use out of the technology we now have and encourage projects to create iBooks?
The children’s work could be uploaded to the iBooks database and be
downloadable by parents from the Grange Website.
·
As part of the push for modernization, Twitter and
Facebook could also be used to disseminate information and discuss/share new
school projects within the community.
I work in a privileged
(very privileged) school in Chile, South America. I've been here for
six years so I don't feel too bad in stating that the minds of a lot of people
are closed to the outside world. Perhaps it is the media, perhaps it is the
education system, or perhaps it is purely because of the geographical location
(the Andres mountains cuts us off from the East, the Pacific Ocean from the
West, Antarctica from the South and the vast Atacama Desert from the
North). For whatever reason it is, I believe as an educator of young
learners, it is my duty to try and close the knowledge gap and bring Chilean
students closer to the rest of the world. 
Although usually aesthetically pleasing, a school site has so much more potential
than is generally used. As well as this, there is outdated information and the
photos rarely get updated. A site would get more views if the
information was updated on a more regular basis.
