Webpage Development Project Outline

• What is the mission of your school /classroom/ organization? Our mission is to create a safe environment in which students can learn.  We do this by holding students accountable to high academic and behavioral expectations, teaching the value of diversity, and through an authentic curriculum full of hands-on and cross-curricular activities.  We are sure to use student and family backgrounds when considering the educational needs of each of our students and promote a high rate of cooperation between home and school.  We want to teach students how to think about issues rather than regurgitate information to help them be successful members of society in the 21st century.

• How will creating a Web site support your mission?  One of the biggest parts of our mission is creating great school-home communication and a blog & website is one of the best ways to do this.  We already have a very active Facebook page, but a place to put a weekly newsletter, monthly unit information, and year-round parent/student help will enhance our communication. 

• What are your two or three most important goals for the site?  
• 1. To increase school-home communication so parents are "in the know" with what we are doing at school AND so that parents feel they have another option for communication other than a note or phone call.
• 2. To give parents a tool to help their child at home with whatever we are doing at school.

• Who is the primary audience for the Web site?  The primary audience will be the parents and families of my current students.

• What do you want the audience to think or do after having visited your site?  I would like them to think that my primary concern is the education of their child.  I would like parents to take the information on the site and use it to spark conversations with their child, help their child understand our current topics of study, and to help parents know what is coming up so they can plan ahead and feel "on top" of things.

• What Web-related strategies will you use to achieve those goals?  
• I want to use an easy to use interface that can be easily navigated on a mobile device.
• I want to use Facebook as a jumping off point to introduce parents to the new website/blog (since so many are already using Facebook to communicate with the classroom already).
• I want to use web traffic to identify which topics/pages generate the largest response from parents and use that to shape future posts/pages.
• I want to focus on content being informative and easy to read (avoiding teacher-speak).

• How will you measure the success of your site?  I will look at page traffic as well as comments and how informed parents are during parent teacher conferences.  I know parents will have been looking at the website and using it if they are familiar with the topics I touch on during conferences.

• How will you adequately maintain the finished site?  I will update the information on the site weekly (adding new topics of study and helpful tips for homework).  I plan on including our weekly newsletter on the site so this should be a easy goal to reach.  I will also check on site traffic at this time.  I want to hook my email up to send any comments the site my receive so I can answer them in a timely manner.

• What type of web site are you considering?  I plan on creating a static webpage.  I want to update the information manually and on my own time table.

• How many “pages” (entries) will the site contain? What is the maximum acceptable count under this budget (note: your ‘budget’ should include the time that you will spend building your site)? Three.
• 1. A general information page.  This page will include my classroom handbook that is handed out at the beginning of the year as well as important dates to remember.  This page will be updated yearly.
• 2. An academic information page.  This page will include information about reading groups, reading assessment, Fry words, reading homework, and information about our math program.  This page will be updated yearly.
• 3. A weekly information page.  This page will house our weekly newsletter, frequently asked questions about that week's homework packet, and links to websites and videos that will be helpful for that week's topics of study.

• What special technical or functional requirements are needed?  I will need a website that can include audio and video files that we might create in class (for podcasts, etc.).  I had a classroom blog last year and had to pay extra to include personal audio files, so I want to be sure that my new website has this capability as well.

• Where will you host your site? For example, is there school or district webspace or will you use a commercial site?  I have used our district's iSchool webspace before but found it very hard to edit and navigate through.  In addition, parents needed a password to log on, decreasing the number of parents who took the time to use the site.  I will be using a commercial site this time.  I really liked the ease of using Weebly to create our personal webpage so I may just use Weebly to create this site.  I may also use Wordpress because I am very familiar with their system through other blogs I have made with them.

• Will your site be open ‘to the world’ or only to a select audience (i.e., your class, your school)?  My site will be open to the world.  I do not plan on posting any pictures of students on this site so I feel comfortable making it available to anyone who can find it.  I have tried to have password protected pages in the past and, in my experience, it deters parents from using the site.

• How will you develop your content inventory? Where will you store it before you put it on the webpage?  I have several items for the webpage already created and stored in Word.  I should be able to copy and paste that information when I am ready to add it to the webpage with only slight adjustments being made to the format once it is transferred.  Some of my other content is stored in playlists on my YouTube channel.

• What type of web access does your audience have (i.e., do they have broadband (cable modems, dsl, etc.) or dial-up? Do they have home access or only school-based access?  The majority of my parents have a computer with internet at home, however those that do not have mobil devices where they can access the webpage.
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• How do you know ? Tell me, in detail, how you know. In order to find out, you may want to conduct a survey of your users.  I had my parents fill out information about their internet access as part of my beginning of the year packet.  Because I communicate a lot through Facebook I wanted to know if parents would be able to access our page.  We also have internet-based homework some days of the week and I wanted to know which families would be able to complete the homework and which families would need their child to use a school computer during school hours.

• What is the budget for the site (note: your ‘budget’ should include the time that you will spend building your site (figure out, approximately, how much you would want to get paid if you were doing this for money, any software that you needed to purchase, etc.)?  Time-wise, the amount of time I could spend setting up this site is probably around 3 hours (if I were just doing it, unprompted, for my classroom) -- because it is part of a graduate class I may end up spending considerably more time than that.  I shouldn't need to spend any extra money on software.  The only place I might need to spend money would be if the website host didn't allow me to include lengthy audio or video files, in which case I might have to spend 40-60 dollars for an upgrade.  If a colleague asked me to create a website for their class I would give them a price of roughly $200.  I would put in a 10 hour day working for $20 and hour.  If it took less than 10 hours to create the site I would prorate my fee.  They would then be in charge of any maintenance and updating for their site.

• What is the production schedule for the site, including intermediate milestones and dates?
• Timeline: 8 weeks until launch
• General outline of project goals: September 11th
• Have website URL set up: September 25th
• Have general class information page content ready: October 2nd
• Halfway Point: October 9th 
• Have academic information page content ready: October 12th
• Have first weekly page update ready: October 23rd
• Complete final touches to website and notify parents about website: Week of October 30th
• Launch date: November 6th