What would you like to see on a school website?

[flouncerpoppedbackforadvice]

Am applying for an in house promotion in charge of public image and raising aspirations through the use of display.

Could I briefly pick your brains, what would you like to see on a school website?

Does your school have a particularly good website you could link to.

it is secondary

term dates
dates of events and meetings, assemblies
reports of school events and pictures
opportunity to purchase school uniform, pay for dinners etc
photos of staff so I could put a face to a name

Had not thought of buying uniform online.

We have the basic information but very few pictures of school events or even reports of events. We are a very good school with a crap website

links to downloadable letters and other correspondance with parents in case kids don't pass them on by hand

photo galleries

Links to intranet?

Info about each dept: staff list, dept. policies (KS3/KS4 curricula), useful websites to help with HW

Links to school policies: bullying, pastoral system, uniform, etc

How whizzy is it going to be? Are students going to be able to access - through a password - curriculum stuff?

ranvilles

invicta

It can be as whizzy as we like.

Heated thanks for the secondary link, I had only managed to find excellent primary websites

another

That community college has really inspired me heated as our school has outstanding facilities that we are keeping hidden.

Thanks again.

Thanks for your advice, my application went in today.

Resources (website pages) to help with homework.
Weblinks that are useful and up to date.

Even though this junior school website/about is not presented very well (it is a few years old now) it's content is very good. woodlands site homepage

I had suggested resources to help with homework, I know the woodlands site there si some very good stuff on there. Thanks

www.britishschool.be is quite good...it will soon be password protected for some areas especially the VLE.

It's useful having messages on there, especially if the school is closed due to bad weather it is displayed on there.

up to date information. kept up to date

lots of pictures of the kids and their great work
stories written by the pupils
art and design
term dates

Yes we do the weather messages as we are in an old building in quite a vulnerable location so have to shut more than other schools.

Scummy I would like to see pupil's work.

scaryteacher I really like that british school website very clear, uncluttered but informative

scary that website has made me realise there is a severe lack of children on our website

Useful facts about club times and dates.
Words to school song, regularly sung assembly songs etc.
The school rules.
Homework policy and rules.

Why did you flounce? I want to do an "Is that you UCM?" line here, although obviously I know it's not!

Lots of pictures of pupils, doing all sorts of subjects, not just the practical ones (our school's website seems to imply that there is only one subject in the entire school grrrr).

Displays/newsletters/podcasts etc out to feeder primaries.

Links to resources required for different year groups in different subjects and to key revision sites etc.

Hope the interview goes well BUT (sorry if this is wrong) I thought that teachers were not supposed to do things like this anymore - as it's essentially an admin thing. Am just asking this out of interest, not criticising!

You have to be very careful to have permission from parents before putting photos on a website.

The school I work for has a very er ... basic website to put it politely, but its my boss' baby. It is limited because of lack of time to develop it.

The biggest problem is keeping information up to date. I agree that the British of Brussels has a fanastic website, but they may have more resources than a typical state secondary to throw at it. It is better to a have a small, but regularly maintained website than a large out of date website.

I think readablity is important. Stick to standard fonts that are on all PCs and bare in mind that some colours of text are more readable than others.

Most schools get parents to sign a form allowing photographs or not. So long as they aren't named, most parents seem to be fine with it.

I forget what's been mentioned already but also:
term dates / dates of teacher days/ parents' evenings etc

Links to departments with an overview of main learning experiences in KS3 and KS4

Some schools do weekly or monthly competitions where different subjects post a question on the website and parents or pupils can email - one chosen at random wins a small prize (school mig anyone?)!

Mig?!!!! Mug!

I left mumsnet about a week to 2 weeks ago. I will not be back ever under my usual name.

I will not be running the website they want an ideas personto give the whole school image a rehaul and part of that is the website.

The school I teach in is not your average state secondary, we are state but quite special.

Our website is spookily child free, our prospectus is downloadable though with kids pictures. In my previous school we could put kids pictures on with no names but will check. I oculd see no reason why work could not go on.

I agree janeite about not just having pictures of practical subjects, my classroom is full of pictures of kids at work in a theoretical lesson