As the newly appointed website coordinator for my children’s elementary school it will be my mission stamp out blinking text, spinning logos, and scrolling text from any and all pages. I also pledge to set an example of clean design, intuitive navigation and improved usability.
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I suspect you’ll be setting a precedent. Good luck!
and can you link out?…I hear those types of sites are highly trusted
just kidding here.
Don’t think I wasn’t tempted, but since we have no plans of moving and my youngest is in Kindergarten having to go through 12 years of “oh so your the guy who put up the spam on the school website” would not be the spot I want to be in.
What is worse though…spam on a school site or the school site the way it is. UGH. I love it when they scan a 300 DPI image of the school and save it as a 300 DPI JPG and use it as the home page. Wait… that was my homepage. hehe
Michael,
Good luck. I tried for 2 years but the genetic programming that leads these ladies into a career in elementary education is predisposed to “blinking text, spinning logos, and scrolling text”.
You will have a place in education history if you can do this.
Dude, why are all elementary school websites the epitomy of bad early 90’s web design?
Well I’d love to get them on a combination wordpress blog CMS, but I realize that would be way to much culture shock.
Why does the image of Sisyphus come to mind on reading this? Best of luck – you’ll need it!
Handy for those .edu links, eh?
It may be a bit much for an elementary school – but there is the open academic project to help you with this. At a minimum I’d recommend a CMS that has community sites as it’s goal rather than one focused on bloggers…
Web based communication has not caught on across all schools as it has in the business world. Partly because of demographics… If half of the kids don’t have a computer at home… information on the website still has to be duplicated and handed out… an added expense which school’s oh so love.
Since you probably won’t have a budget (or little) I think the open source CMS route is a good way to go.
The buy-in from teachers will be mixed… but it has nothing to do with pre-disposition from genetic programming. It’s like new toys for kids… the flashy gizmo gets the attention and over used. These individuals do not spend as much time on line as people reading this blog, so the spinning logo is still “neat” to them. Proper education and PATIENCE will work.
I run my kid’s elementary school site and for years it looked nice but was pretty much brochureware.
A parent came onto the school board that wanted to start e-mail lists and have the ability to post messages on the site.
I set up blogger so they could use it as a CMS system and it has been great. The parents have really embraced it.
For the next round OpenAcademic looks promising but maybe a little too much too soon.
We have similar systems in the high schools and they are working out great. The hurdle is getting the teachers to embrace it.
Hi, I found your blog through a website search for “elementary school website administrator!” Cool, huh?
I’m a parent of a K and 2nd grader and redesigned their site (somewhat), also trying to stamp out the spinning books and whatnot.
Question for you: You’re a volunteer? Are you on the districts’ payroll? If you’re a volunteer parent, like me, how do you handle administration and access to their host? Did they give you a password/login? Or is someone on the faculty uploading/administering it with you?
These are hurdles we’re trying to jump, here in North Carolina!
Thanks!
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