Management Tools

Good site management begins with planning. Decide what "categories" will be on your site. Find people excited about maintaining each category, and have these people be the "content maintainers". Create your site in a way that different content areas can fit into the overall site.

To do this, create a few global objects. There should be standard "banner graphics" available for all pages. All pages should have same color scheme, and the same font sets (font face and size). Create a menu that can be used on every page on the site.

For certain areas, it is a good idea to put tight controls on how the pages look. A good example is the teacher web page area. Without some good "site guidelines", this area will have ever "cool" HTML trick from every web class or workshop that a teacher attends, and not a lot of useful content.

HTML can be learn to learn, especially if a person doesn't have a fair amount of time to devote to training and practice. If you would like to have teachers create their web pages, there are several approachs.

• Make some design rules. Let the teachers create pages from scratch.
• Create "templates" for teachers. The teachers can then use these as a starting point, and create their own pages.
• Install a "system" that controls the creation of the web pages. Teachers can fill out forms, and the server creates the web pages.

If at all possible, your school district should try to move towards the bottom of this list. Systems that control web creation and content can be expensive (both in dollars and in time). Take a look at the subscription service available from WGTE the Ed Tech in Toledo.

http://www.buildyourownwebsite.org/byow/tour/ (click on the "Click here" at the bottom of the page)

There are systems available like this. Some are free. One such example is Moodle.

http://moodle.org

Moodle is free, but a district must buy a server, and pay a person to set it up. The upfront time investment may be high, but it usually pays off in the end.

The Assignment