Just inherited our school's website... what should I replace frontpage with?
Yep, that's right. Our school webpage is currently still using frontpage for all of the school and teacher pages. It's out of date, obnoxious to use, and just flat out not a good way to do things anymore with so many quality cms solutions.
So what is everyone using these days? From what I have found out, the tech coordinator is not wanting to give server access to teachers for updating their sites on their own. They want to be able to check it over first before publishing. As of right now I am thinking along the lines of Wordpress MU and setting the teachers to contributors. Thoughts?
So what is everyone using these days? From what I have found out, the tech coordinator is not wanting to give server access to teachers for updating their sites on their own. They want to be able to check it over first before publishing. As of right now I am thinking along the lines of Wordpress MU and setting the teachers to contributors. Thoughts?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Scott Walker on
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What I would like to do at this point is do the main school info pages on Joomla or CMS made Simple, and then doing the teacher pages on Wordpress.
My thinking behind this is that these CMS's would provide an easier learning curve for the students(that would be creating the school info pages), and the teachers(that would be in charge of their own teacher pages).
Am I shortchanging my students by making them use a Content Management System instead of learning CSS and HTML to use DreamWeaver, FireWorks, Nvu, or FrontPage?
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Permalink Reply by Zach Vander Veen on
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Part of this is a question of how complicated do you want to get and what, exactly, is your purpose. You're talking about 3 different types of users here - a tech administrator, teachers, and student. What do you want each group to do? Are teachers using the school website to constantly update lesson plans? Post Assignments? Just give their email address and a brief biography? Do you want students to have blogs? Take tests? etc.
Joomla/CMSmadesimple/Drupal are great tools to use for a main school site (you know, the pages that list weekly news, directions, lunch menu, etc). Their big advantage is that you can assign controlled access (like giving the secretary access to the weekly news page) and share the burden. They can also be used for teacher sites if a teacher has a simple page (bio, email, etc).
Wordpress's advantage is that, because it's a blog, you can add posts week to week. I use it for the purpose of posting my lesson plans (example: misterv.net).
Another thing you might consider (and apologies if this is more than you asked for) is the very excellent Moodle. I convinced many teachers in my district that it's the future of education. In nearly every case, once they learn how much Moodle can do for their classroom, they stop using the many options (contribute, wordpress, etc) and use Moodle as their teacher website. (To be more precise - they have a generic teacher page with their bio and contact info along with a login to Moodle).
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Permalink Reply by Edwin Wargo on
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Hi Scott,
I've wrestled with the question of content (CMS) and learning the technical details. My thinking is that it depends on your goals and students. If the goal and focus is on content, I think a CMS is a great tool to use. From my experiences, content can quickly take a backseat to the technical stuff; the tool is no longer just that (a tool) and loses its transparency. That is why I love wikis so much - they really can take the technical variables out of the equation.
Learning HTML and CSS does have a place but I think a specialized one. This is the area that I've wrestled with so much especially since learning it (1995) and teaching it (1996) so early on gives me pause to not want to forget that part of technology. I'm not sure if instructional time should be spent on the technical areas or writing/creating the content and collaborating if time is at a premium. I guess I lean towards content.
From a 21st century skill perspective, I can see a case being made for both. In online banking, both were used. CMS was used mostly by the non-technical marketing and business folks while the techs were up to their elbows in HTML and code. That's just one example, but overall I guess it goes back to the goal and students.
For teachers, CMS (wikis, blogs, etc) is essential, I think, unless they otherwise request it. Adding complexity to the process when simple solutions exist, I think, can make adoption a tough row to hoe. I still kind of cringe thinking of when I'd teach HTML and FrontPage to teachers. Not at all taking anything away from them because they were otherwise awesome teachers, they just wanted to get words on the page but the HTML and FrontPage kept getting in the way. Sustainable use never got off the ground.
Good luck with your decision.
Edwin
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Zach and Edwin,
I see what you are both saying.. it does depend on the goals for each of the users. Thanks for reminding me of that direction.
Tech Admin - Mine are over burdened and under skilled. They were taught in the old school of web dev and have not picked up on php or css. The goal for them is simplicity. If they must continue to check out everything before it hits the web, then there must be a simple way for them to go through and check it out. Something so that they could see that something is waiting to be published. And they just hit ok.
As for me, I have knowledge of CMS and very little coding. So I think that CMS would be the best route for both the techies and myself.
Teachers - Like Edwin said, content must be king, and the easier it is for them to get it up and going the better. As of right now, no teacher uses it for anything but a static teacher page with outdated syllabi's and teacher info... Something more simple than frontpage could change this. Again I think CMS would be best for them.
Students - My students will be creating the website and helping to manage it. I want them to be able to get their feet wet quickly, and the usability of drupal(thanks for the idea josemota), wordpress and joomla would definitely do this. But I don't want to leave them out in the cold by not introducing them to coding.
Should I use cms for the website, and focus on lessons using dummy servers for dealing with the coding so they get the best of both worlds?
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"Over burdened and underskilled" - I've been there. It does sound like a CMS sounds like the way to go. As for having you students learn bits of code, wordpress could give you both words. It allows you either to place content using a WYSIWYG or "Code Mode". You could teach students basic html and have them try it out in wordpress.
I'd like my students to understand the basics of html code (most of them do...for the purpose of their myspace pages). Sometimes WYSIWYG editors just don't work the way you want them to - so have a simple understanding of code can help in many ways.
Personally, when it comes to website design, I'd stay away from Frontpage. It's default templates rely on tables for design (and it's an old program). Most websites today use CSS for design (in my opinion, it just looks cleaner). If you're looking for an excellent repository of free CSS templates, check out OWSD. I'm not sure how much you're familiar with CSS - but I've always found it easier to learn by playing with something that's already there. As for what program to use in designing websites - I've liked Dreamweaver (when the school purchased a license) and Kompozer (great opensource program).
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Permalink Reply by Sharon Betts on
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I am moving my district site to Joomla (with multiple authors). For teachers we are using wikispaces, moodle, 21publish and FirstClass - whatever they find the easiest and most relevant to their classes. Students are going to be given the ability to blog or wiki pages (if they have a teacher mentor).
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Sharon that sounds like a superb model for the wikis and blogs! What will the students be using? Will they be able to publish or will the mentor publish after a review? How do they go about getting a mentor?
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I purchased a Private label from Wikispaces and the hosted server model from 21classes. I believe the cost is well worth it as it gives the staff and administration a feeling of more security. The mentors are responsible for reviewing the content and can do it in any method they wish. Students will simply ask (at lower grades it is their classroom teacher, mid-level most likely the advisor, and at upper classes more varied). We have an application form that the student fills out - part of the form is a signature from their mentor teacher. I hope to "require" every teacher to have a web presence also. They can choose to blog, setup a wiki, setup a Moodle class or do a regular website.
Each of our teachers has a laptop issued by the district (we did this under a lease 2 years ago) and i offer training and support throughout the year.
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Permalink Reply by josemota on
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I believe Drupal - www.drupal.org - would give you a good overall and flexible solution. It's really easy to publish content (you have individual blogs, discussion forums, articles, etc.and you can create html pages) and it's very powerful under the hood. Teachers and students could concentrate on content, and IT guys on administering things.
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Permalink Reply by Nancy Bosch on
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I've been doing websites for 10 + years using Frontpage, I only know enough HTML to know what I've done wrong. One thing that has really perked up my sites this last year is using free templates or buying them from Round the Bend Wizards You can see an earlier site here (no menu--no master theme--all changes done by hand) and a newer one here using a free template (I use the forms templates since I don't know CSS) and I think it looks good. The designer is kind enough to help.
If I were you, I'd get blog accounts for teachers---the designing is all done for you, they look good and they are a no-brainer for adding text and saving. Anything you can do on a website you can do on a blog---it's a great tool for communicating with parents and there are already too many ugly classroom websites out there.
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I hadn't thought about using templates, that's a good idea. But I thought Frontpage was no longer supported by microsoft?
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Hmmm, don't know if I've ever used Microsoft for support---I just kinda figured out as I went along, occasionally busting out Frontpage for Dummies. All you do with the template is d/l it and then open it in FP. You are limited only by the restrictions of the template but they offer a navigation page which puts the menu on each page, formats the tables, fonts, colors etc. You can add as many pages as you want and even change the master template's colors, fonts etc if you know enought HTML to do it. Otherwise everything is set up for you. I think the designer has good taste. You could always try a free one, publish a few pages and see what you think. Do that just for your school and let teachers set up blogs for themselves which you could link to.
Only mistake I made with the template is buying one ($55.00) that used CSS and I didn't know enough to work with it. As I said, I use a table-based one which I was familiar with working on my own. Here's my classroom site and another site I did this fall. I used Around the Bend Wizards free templates for all of them. Here is my personal website http://adifferentplace.org which I cobbed together with my paltry FP skills about 10 years ago. Here are my personal blogs--here and here here This is what your teacher blogs could look like--you could even have them choose all the same template to co-ordinate with the website they would be linked from.
I use Blogger for my blogs and there is one tiny issue which has been discussed in this forum---there is a link to next blog at the top and within a few clicks you could be at a site which discloses Bob from Cleveland's nightime activities. Yikes! There is a way to remove that button. You probably already know this. Another option would be a school wiki with each teacher maintaining a page. Let me know what you decide to do. N.
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