The website refresh plan

 Many of us, I'm sure, identify with the old vaudeville plate spinning act. The acrobat/comedian/fool sets an impossible number of fragile dinnerware pieces rotating on top of tall poles, catching each toppling plate a fraction of a second before it loses all centrifugal force and crashes. The more last minute the "save," the greater the wobbly entertainment value.

When many of us start a project, once it is truly "spinning," we then go on to give our attention back to other projects that might be tipping - or just as likely get out another stick and plate. Those items that seem to be steady get very few extra spins from us.

One of the "plates" that looks like it needs a little push is our district's website. The current iteration has been running for about five years pretty smoothly but is looking a little stale. And we need to make some serious decisions about its future purpose.

Our website has two primary purposes: 1) as a means of promoting our district and providing the general community reliable and current information, and 2) as a means for teachers to provide specific information and materials to their students and parents.

Given the rise of Moodle and what seems to be a general demand? for online components to F2F classes, I am questioning whether one website can continue to do a good job meeting both purposes. (Yes, vendors, I am sure yours does. No need to contact me.) The general public seems to expect a more interactive experience with their online resources. How do we provide that beyond having Facebook fan pages and Twitter feeds coming from our PR office?

So we're hoping to do a web site evaluation. Working with the PR office, we are planning to poll our parents about what they use and what they would like to have available. We'll run F2F "usability" trials with focus groups based on the results of the survey (How easy is it to find the most asked-for information?) And finally we'll put a proposal together for a web-site redesign.

I'm kind of excited.

Anyway, below is a short survey we'll be sending to our households (via Forms on GoogleDocs). Trying to keep it both specific and short is tough. But what might be missing? How have you evaluated your school's website?

Survey of households on the use of the district website
Please check the items you currently use and find useful on the Mankato Area Public School’s website.

District-wide

1. 1. News and events (including weather related school closings)
   2. Forms to subscribe to district news text messages and e-mails.
   3. General school calendar
   4. Testing calendar
   5. Calendar of sports, music and other extra curricular events
   6. Employment opportunities
   7. Strategic Roadmap/Information booklet/District newsletters/Budget reports
   8. School supply list
   9. School board information - meeting agendas and minutes, policies, contact information
   10. Foundation information
   11. Food service including daily breakfast and lunch menus
   12. Curriculum information
   13. Health service information
   14. Special education information
   15. Career and guidance information
   16. Library and technology information
   17. Early childhood information
   18. Transportation including bus routes and school district boundaries
   19. Contact information for district employees
   20. Community education resources
   21. Links to online learning and research resources

School building information

1. 1. Staff directory for the building and teachers (phone numbers, e-mail address)
   2. School address
   3. School building calendar
   4. Newsletters/School improvement plans
   5. Library media center information and the library catalog
   6. Parent Teacher Organization information

Classroom information

1. 1. Teacher’s phone and e-mail address
   2. General classroom information/About the teacher information
   3. Learning resources such as worksheets, study guides, spelling lists, recommended reading materials, etc.
   4. Links to online resources to support the curriculum
   5. Class syllabus or list of units
      Note that individual grades, assignment status, attendance and other information is available from a separate parent portal into our student information system in our district.

Please list any other items that you find on the website but are not on the list above.

Please list any other items that you would like to find on the website, but are not available or are not easily found.

My children are in (check all that apply):
_____ preschool
_____ K-6
_____ 7-8
_____ 9-12

Advice to my friends in the snowy South

Lake Jefferson, LeSueur County, MN November 14, 2010

While it may not seem like it now to those of you south of the Mason-Dixon who are experiencing a little of the white stuff, take it from me, snow is good for you...

1. It builds character.
2. Tests your driving skills.
3. You get back whole days of your life when school is closed.
4. It covers all those leaves in the yard you didn't get raked this fall.
5. Provides a good excuse to drink hot toddies.
6. Get the sled out for cheap thrills.
7. Shoveling provides good exercise right up to the heart attack.
8. Forces you to slow down and smell the antifreeze.
9. Lets you check the tracks in the snow to see what creatures visit you during the night.
10. Did I mention, school closed?

My advice: Enjoy the snow. It may be as close to living here in Minnesota (where it is only a local call to God) as you might get.

You need to borrow a snowblower or a shovel, let me know.

Please, Georgians, get the Atlanta airport back open by Wednesday. I have to transfer there on my way to Dubai.

BFTP: What gets tested, gets taught

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post January 10, 2006. This post was also turned into a column of the same name. The separate vs integrated controversy continues and IT/IL skills still are not given the importance in education they deserve. But then, it's only been 30 years or so ...

Does teaching technology skills as a separate curriculum mean they can't be integrated into the content areas as well? I've addressed this question before regarding information literacy skills in a column called Owning Our Curriculum. I'll try to make the same points about technology literacy here that I did about information literacy in the column. (I have a tough time separating info and tech literacy anymore anyway).

1. Info/tech literacy is a basic skill every student should master. It should be treated with the same importance as the other recognized basic skills  of reading, writing and math.
2. Teaching basic skills as a separate, non-integrated subject is viewed as good educational practice. We have reading, writing and math curricula, teaching materials, courses, teachers and tests.
3. Basic skills should be "integrated" (or perhaps a better word is applied) across the curriculum. We want social studies and science teachers to "teach" writing skills and practice writing, yes?
4. Integrating skills does not eliminate the need for basic skills curricula, teaching materials, courses, teachers and tests.
5. The public expects schools to be accountable for teaching basic skills. The current way of being accountable is through testing. (See more on this below in my response to David Warlick.)
6. What gets tested, gets taught.

I don't see that integration and viewing information/technology as a separate set of skills to be taught are exclusive. If such skills are only integrated, nobody has responsibility for student acquistion of such skills and everybody has the opportunity to pass the responsibility on to someone else.

David Warlick defends the messiness of authentic assessment in More Loose Change on his 2 Cents Worth blog (and in a reply to the Blue Skunk post Loose Change - follow-up):

...although performance/production based assessment is messy, messy is what teachers do. Certainly multiple-choice/true-false assessments have always been a convenient crutch to many teachers. But project-based/product-based teaching, learning, and assessment were much easier to implement before high-stakes testing. The critical change is that communities have lost confidence in their teachers (for no good reason), and education has begun to lose confidence in itself. I think that we need to empower teachers and then turn education back over to them, the experts.

I don't disagree with David, but I would also say there is a place and need for testing* as well as assessment when it comes to I/T skills if they are to me taken seriously by educators. I am huge fan of Rick Stiggins and his Assessment for Learning work. Hell, I offer workshops on authentic assessment of I/T skills myself. Good, messy assessments using well-designed tools are critical to the teaching and learning process. They are good for kids, promoting growth, not simply categorization.

The problem is that we live in a society that believes in testing. And quite honestly, a degree of accountability shown through testing is not all bad. (See Exposing Shameful Little Secrets.) Our problem is that the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of testing and the results being used punatively. This is a problem with test expectations and result use, not testing in itself.  And hey, you want something taken seriously by teachers just put it on the next high-stakes test. That is the reality as much as we may not like it.

* I will admit that I have yet to see a very good "objective" test on basic IT skills.