Primary School website:

1
Kaleidoscope 2008
5th Annual Postgraduate Conference in Education
Primary School website Effective development
and administration Using Open Content Management
Systems
By G. Michael
LJMU School of Computing and Mathematical
Sciences
2
So is it actually a reason to have a Primary
School Website?

• 3 main issues
• Pupils present their own work to global range
• Pupils involved to technology (word processing
  image editing etc)
• COMMUNICATION (School Family, School twinning)

3
Ok My School has a website with its last update
2006!

• These websites (static and out to date) are VERY
  common in primary school
• WHY?
• Heavy work to be covered by a singe teacher
• RESULT
• Using the technology (website) only because it
  exists no educational effect AT ALL

4
What do we actually expect from an effective
primary school website?

• Pupils involvement
• Spread of work and responsibilities
• Interaction
• Active content up-to-date
• In fact

5
we only need follow the recipe of success today

• Can we do it like facebook???
• LIVE and ACTIVE Website

6
Tools to achieve goals CMS!
C O N T E N T M A
N A G E M E N T S Y S T E M S
C O N T E N T M A N A G E M E N T
S Y S T E M S

• Content Management Systems (Web Content
  Management Systems)
• Last 3-5 years CMS comprise the main method for
  the majority of successful web applications
• The contents administration moves from designers
  to users.
• Blogs are the widest successful example of CMS
  projects today
• users with no web progr. skills are becoming web
  authors.
• James Logan Courier example

7
CMS philosophy

• Content is free of source-code, enabling end
  users contribution
• Built in complete independent pieces (objects)
  making easy of any further additions and
  modifications

8
CMS offer complex work already done for you!

• Automate features
• Users registration
• Photo albums
• Discussion boards
• Blogs
• Search bars, polls, file managers, calendars
• Variety of themes, easy to apply
• Support and documentation
• Ready work shared within communities

9
Open-Source CMS

• FREE Distribution
• The source code is given, able to modify
• Created by communities
• Additional extensions improve those systems
• Many successful examples the last 3-5 years

10
Open-Source CMS

• Joomla (www.joomla.org)
• Drupal (www.drupal.org)
• WordPress (www.wordpress.org)
• e107 (www.e107.org)
• Typo3 (www.typo3.org)
• CMS MadeSimple (www.cmsmadesimple.org)
• More than 500 available today!!!

11
Selecting an Open CMS to develop primary school
website

• Easy to use, no need for coding/programming
  operations
• Simple Content (text and images) administration
  (common text and image editors philosophy)
• Support communication features Blogs, Forums
• The best CMS is that which satisfies its user

12
Theory is good reality is better

• Joomla example
• We need about 10 minutes to develop our initial
  school website

13
ok so far we spent the first ten minutes

• the tools are there, so why not to use them

14
Links

• Cyprus Primary Schools Limassol province
• School website example 1
• School website example 2
• Jm-school example