Do you want to know about the potential uses for a K-12 district home page? Do you want to see some actual home pages from school districts around the nation? If so, click on "K-12 School District Home Pages." Below is a summary of the important highlights of K-12 School District Home Pages.
District home pages can be thought of as interactive electronic bulletin boards. A wide array of information can be disseminated and viewed using the web as a medium. News and information that school districts and their component parts routinely disseminate to their constituents (parents, faculty, staff, students, community members, professional colleagues, etc.) can potentially be enhanced and disseminated more efficiently using the web. Here are some potential advantages for districts maintaining a home page:
In general, a good district home page should provide resources for parents, students, teachers, and community members. It should include general information about the district and its schools, important policies, relevant reports and data concerning school and student achievement, announcements and bulletins, schedules of events, telephone and e-mail directories, and sites for students, teachers, and parents to post relevant information and products. In terms of design, the web page should be easy to read, easy to navigate through, and organized according to topic and category. An internal search engine is also a nice feature.
As previously stated, district web pages offer several new possibilities as well as several new challenges. Schools should carefully examine issues surrounding this new form of communication and explore its potential on a district-by-district basis. Clearly not all of a school district's constituents are going to have the capability or perhaps even desire to utilize this new communication tool. As a result, this tool must be used to supplement current communication vehicles, not supplant them. Designs, formats, and applications of district home pages are evolving every day. Most of the sample sites provided above have been revised since I first viewed them. Perhaps future improvements in internet capabilities as well as issues related to accessibility and cost will cause district home pages to become as commonplace as report cards in the mailbox.
Go to "K-12 School District Home Pages"
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