I decided to focus on Barnegat Township for this assignment. It was very interesting viewing the page of Barnegat as I never did before. On the main page I found a handful of useful information. The first thing that caught my eye on the home page was the school calender, school times, and finally a review of the 5k run for Barnegat. These three links were under the headline section which was easy to view on the site and showed its importance to the viewers. There is also a section on upcoming events which is good to have so the parents can view any events their child might not have told them about. I believe keeping everyone involved, up to date on events, and future plans is very important to a school district.
I remember reading an article about what children in 2011 will not experience. They had a few topics I could agree on such as home telephones, typewriters, and hand written mailed letters. I however did not agree on watches, as they stated everyone will have an I-Phone in their hands at all times with the exact time. I believe watches fall into a category of style and fashion, but that's something else to get into. The one thing that they did mention was long distance. Many years ago the average person didn't really have "friends" who lived hundred of miles away. People didn't know what was going on at all times because it was pretty much word of mouth. Now word of mouth is a click away so having a website about a school district and all the information is just as important as meetings they used to have to update parents about what was going on.
Barnegat has done a very good job with their site, it is organized, easy to follow, and very informative. I enjoyed viewing and learning new things and think district websites play an important role to a successful education.
Websites are important as sources of information to parents and students. How does this site address the last two points of Dr. McKenzie's article about effective websites?
ReplyDeleteI think the Barnegat website definitely matches up to the points that Dr. McKenzie was trying to cover. When I first wrote my Blog I skipped over the fact that we were supposed to read "Why in the World Wide Web" which actually might have worked out better. The first point that I made in my response was how the Barnegat website posted the results from a 5k run they had. Dr. McKenzie had one point in her article which was as followed (#3 They offer an opportunity for the publishing of student works to both a local and a global audience - whether those works be art, music, or writing). Now I am not saying running a 5k and writing is the same thing, but I am not arguing that they are different. They both show something that was accomplished by the students which is what is important. Perhaps in 1997 writing a hand written letter was acceptable but today an email is.
ReplyDeleteAs for point (#4 They provide rich data locally collected on curriculum related topics (such as local history), whether these collections take the form of data warehouses, virtual museums or virtual libraries.
Some school sites do all four of these, but most concentrate on providing quality for two or three of these elements. Those responsible for creating and then managing Web sites soon learn that ambitious designs require a vast investment in upkeep).
Barnegat does focus on this but I believe this is less important to the overall view of this website. People would now have different resources and would tend to look in different places to find out this information. Again, I do not think this was an incorrect view from Dr. McKenzie, just one that adapted through and shifted levels of importance to a particular website. An example of this could be Myspace.com, maybe at one time it was all about personal profiles and connecting with people and now its all about advertising for companies and new artists.
Overall I was impressed with the article and I thought this assignment was an interesting one to think about.
This site sounds very similar to the Point Pleasant district's site. I also agreed with what you said about the district investing in their website. A newer more modern web-page would definitely been more impressive, but what they had got the job done.
ReplyDeleteThis site is also very similar to Lavalette's website.
ReplyDeleteThey also have information about bullying, a relevant issue.