School information - The website must include the school’s history, mission, philosophy, and plans. The website can provide the school’s hymn in MP3 or WMA format for visitors and nostalgic alumni/alumna to hear. The website must also provide the address of the school and directions on how to get there. Including a map would be very helpful.
Contact information - The school must provide a way for parents to contact teachers and school officials by either by listing their phone numbers or email addresses. With regards to email addresses, it gives a better impression if the teachers have addresses under the school’s domain name, e.g., greg.moreno@gmhs.edu.ph.
Another approach is for the website to have a contact page where parents could leave a message. The parent could simply select the name of the teachers, write a message, and click a ‘Send’ button. In this case, the school should provide teachers the ability to retrieve these messages in a secure manner; teachers may not want others to read messages intended solely for them.
School updates - Keeping the contents of the school website fresh and updated is the hallmark of well-planned website but it requires the most effort. Often, schools only provide either outdated news or static information such as school history.
School updates can include intra and inter-school events, announcements of upcoming parent-teacher conferences, and holidays among others. Special events within the school such as a graduation ceremony can be captured using digital cameras and posted on the school website. A digital video of the school play can be posted on the website so that parents can view them after work or on weekends.
Educational resources - The school website can also be positioned as the student’s portal to the Internet. The school website can contain electronic books, teaching aids, journals and links to other useful websites. Teachers and librarians could review, suggest, and maintain these online materials. This kind of information can also help the parents in need of materials to help the students at home.
Teachers will also benefit from this service. Teachers can use the website to collect the materials they have used in the classroom for their use in succeeding school years. New teachers will have the leverage of having good teaching materials readily available and avoid having to redo the research and compilation. Teachers may even post the lesson plan so that students and parents can know the topics in advance if they want to.
Interaction opportunities - The school website can host electronic forums where parents, teachers, and school officials discuss various relevant topics. Unlike a PTA meeting where ideally everybody must be present before the discussion is started, an electronic forum allows a person to speak up at virtually any time. The contents of a forum are available for future use and can also be used by school officials for conducting informal online surveys involving teachers and parents.
Family-school connection - A school website can link families to their children’s classroom. Through the website, teachers can inform parents about curricula and course objectives. The classroom webpage can display upcoming and completed projects of the students. It can also provide information about homeworks and suggestions on how parents can help their children at home. Photographs and diaries from exposure trips can also be published in the classroom webpage. |
