WebedtecH

Let’s set the stage.  We have an organization (XYZ) that is building it’s intranet on Google Apps.  They are planning the following:

Main Site
—– Administrative Team
———- Policies and Procedures
—– Human Resources Team
———- Policies and Procedures
—– Forms and Files
———- HR Forms
———- Sales and Marketing Forms
—– Sales and Marketing
———- Contact Information
—– Information Technology
———- Technical References
———- Help Desk
———- IT Team Site

You can see already that there’s overlap in some needs and segmentation in others when it comes to planning the sites.  The biggest challenge arises withe the realization that security in Google Apps is tied to the site level currently rather than the content level as is the case with most other collaborative platforms.  So how to get around this?

Step one – The World is Flat

Rather than having a site hierarchy that is tree like in structure (which most people are used to) I recommend you use as flat a structure as possible.  Create a main site that you will use as the home for your intranet and then add to it links that navigate to all the “sub-sites” for your intranet.  They aren’t actually under the main but your end users won’t know the difference.  This way you only need to add one link to every sub-site to take you back to the home site for navigation.

Step Two – Security by Obscurity

Google Apps doesn’t provide a great deal of security modeling and control so the easiest way to manage this is by creating sites around each security “bubble” you need to have.  For example if you have an Administration site and you want a section just for Executives you’ll need to create an Executive site and grant access that site just to the Executives.  You’ll most likely place a link on the Administration site to the Executive site, but unauthorized people will receive a warning when they try to follow it.  If you want a “highly secure” (I use the term loosely) site, just keep it out of your navigation menus.  If people don’t know it’s there they can’t try to access it in the first place.

Step Three – Locking the File Cabinet

If you have a need to isolate a section of a site, for example administrative HR forms from regular files, you’ll need to create another site and make it the file cabinet since you will be able to control the security on that site separately.

The rule of thumb for Google Apps is if you need to secure it, put it into a site.

Part four – Designing pages for your users

Making a presence for your school on the internet is much more than building a web site using Dreamweaver and putting it out there.  Social networking combined with a better understanding of the nature of the internet communications relationship opens up new avenues of contact.  There is a heightened expectation the school should over communicate to the parents and the community.  Failing to do so is considered a lack of transparency on the school’s part.  A local district has been having extensive board/superintendent problems as of late and when their site was down for some presumably unrelated reason questions were raised about the timing of the outage.  The dependence people have on the web site for a school or district being the public face and place for information is something not to be taken lightly anymore.

Schools dedicating time and effort to build sites that are not condusive to the communications needs of their visitors are wasting money and effort.  There are a vast number of tools available now a school can leverage to get information to their families and staff with little or no cost to the school.  For example:

• School blog – using a blogging solution such as Wordpress to generate content quickly when the situation arises is an excellent addition to the traditional “This is who we are” web site.  Posts can be categorized and tagged, so anyone interested in sports schedule updates or weather alerts can find them quickly.  Using the correct plugins announcements can be pushed to social networking sites such as Facebook or microblogging sites such as Twitter.
• Facebook – Social networking sites have become a center of activities for families and alumni alike.  Using them to the advantage of the school just makes sense.  Create a Facebook page for your school and post your updates there so people can pick them up on their newsfeeds, sign up as fans, and interact directly with your school.
• RSS Feeds – Setting up your school news in filtered RSS feeds is a great way to direct content to the interested audiences.  For example, a feed that relies on the tag “alumni” means they will get updates that are applicable to just them.  Other tag ideas include sports, fundraising, weather, etc.

What it comes down to is this…don’t build your site just for one audience.  If you are so compelled to have your marketing message take over your site, then build two and segment the news from the marketing content.  Audiences who have an established relationship with your school have no reason to dig through your “25 reasons to attend our school” no matter how good those reasons are.

Comments?

Next article – Using Facebook to market your school

I recently received a question from a parent about how it would be best to manage and filter their child’s web site explorations at home.  Here’s my response:

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Sit down with your child at the computer and ask him to teach you about Webkinz and Neopets and the other sites he is interested in.  Don’t take it from the position of evaluating the sites but rather from a sincere interest in learning more about them and what he is interested.  By doing that you will gain several things:

1. You will have a better understanding of these virtual worlds and the types of interactions that can happen in them, both positive and negative.
2. You will be able to spend some time and observe his/her interactions with the games and see what aspects of them he tends towards.  Boys by nature gravitate to more action-oriented sections of games where girls traditionally gravitate to puzzles and interactive environments.  (Of course there are always exceptions to the rule).
3. Gaming environments can be very engaging, especially if a child has a vivid imagination or tends to get immersed in things easily.  Compare his game reactions to the reactions he has to movies and cartoons.  Are they similar, stronger, or weaker?
4. Look for common themes in the types of characters he/she chooses to play.  If he/she chooses one over another, don’t hesitate to ask him why.  There may be commonalities in his decisions, such as powerful versus weak, a specific look, gender association, etc.
5. This may be the biggest stretch for you…but ask him/her to help you set up your own characters and take you through the world.  Aside from it being good quality time you will be establishing credibility with him when it comes time to execute parental control on worlds and places he should not be entering.  Do not hesitate to try the sites he is visiting on your own when he is not around.  The more you learn about the sites the better off you will be.
6. Check in with him.  Every so often ask him/her how his characters are doing (make a point to learn the character names and the names he/she gave them).

There are systems available that can be used to filter web sites from kids (we use one at the school called OpenDNS [http://www.opendns.com] that is free and provides a great deal of control at the machine level.  However, no technological solution can replace building the understanding between you and he as to the types of things you consider appropriate and not.

The sites he/she has identified so far are known kids sites and many have protections in place for child safety.  (Gaia is targeted for PG-13 so I’d recommend against that.)  Most sites that draw kids will have some sort of parental information available easily from their home page.

He/she will want to explore and try new things, that is a given.  Working with him/her is the best solution in preparing him/her to be responsible as he/she grows on the internet.  I equate it to when he/she starts to drive.  The driving lessons will be invaluable since at some point he’ll have to leave the parking lot.

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Comments?

Always on the lookout for cool (and educationally beneficial) tools for the classroom, this one seems like a winner at first blush.

It’s Full Of Stars: Google Conquers the Stars After Fully Invading Earth – Gizmodo

Technorati Tags: astronomy, google, edtech, classroom

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Before last school year we relaunched the web site for Coventry Christian Schools at educatingforlife.com. Over the coming weeks I’ll review the steps we went through to bring the new web site online and how it succeeded over the year. For a point of reference, with a school of slightly more than 400 students we generated almost 6,000 unique visitors and over 80,000 page views of content.

I’m outlining what we did to build our new school web site last year not in an effort to tell you to go build a new one for your school (although you’re more than welcome to) but rather to provide some insight and guidance as you go through producing any content on the web for public distribution. These guidelines can help you whether you’re building a district site, a school site, a class site, or even a personal blog.

Remember some key things about the typical school audience:

• They don’t have a lot of time to spare
• They are interested in specific information that is applicable to
  them (don’t make them read through the entire article about homework
  study techniques before realizing it’s only applicable to a certain
  grade or class)
• They will most likely not be checking your site on a daily basis

Step 1 – Gather your content

The axiom that content is king is never more true than with school web sites and information. People want to know what’s going on and who’s doing what. The web provides a fantastic, time-shifted (you’ll find I’m all about time-shifting) medium for people to keep in the loop. Whether you’re building a new site or redesigning an old one, perform an audit of your content. Look for:

• Content past it’s expiration date
• Changes in people, dates, or references (addresses, phone numbers, emails, etc.)
• Sensitive information (student’s first and last names, personal details, etc.)
• Relevant content

Once you have all your content gathered and audited, take a critical look at it from the viewer’s perspective.

• Is it work to read it?
• Is it engaging?
• Is it too long? (Most people, unless completely engaged in an article, are daunted by something that scrolls more than two full screens.)
• Does it make sense?
• Could it use some images / drawings / pictures?

Next…step 2…Put it where they can find it

Technorati Tags: ed-tech, blogging, web publishing, writing, content