Creating and maintaining your school or classroom web site is a rewarding and exciting experience. But it can quickly turn into a tedious and burdensome effort if you want your site to remain current. By delegating responsibilities to other individuals, stating clear goals and expectations for each person and monitoring their progress, your site can quickly become a rich resource with current data.

There are three different roles that members of the School Web Team will have:

1. Policy Making Role: The role of these individuals is to research, write and present the school policy for web publishing. They may not necessarily create the content for the web site, but only determine what information they want included on the web site (school calendar, newsletters, curriculum projects, staff contact information, etc.). This policy committee empowers the web site manager to oversee that the content published follows the corporation's adopted policy for web publishing. The next page in this tutorial addresses additional tips for creating your corporation's web publishing policy. Representatives from these areas should include:
   • students
   • a teacher representative from each grade level or curriculum area
   • parents
   • administration
   • educator/technology coordinator who is designated as the web site manager
2. Content Development Role: This can become a subcommittee of the policy web site web team. These members may not necessarily belong to the same committee that develops the policies for publishing, but they must create material that follows the policies adopted by their corporation. There can be numerous content development subcommittees. Members of each team should include:
   • classroom teacher
   • students
   • parents
3. Web Site Manager Role: This person is the liaison between the members of the content development committees and the policy making committee. They are responsible for uploading information to the web server or designating other adults to upload information. This person is responsible for determining whether or not the information follows the corporation's web publishing policies for content and style as well as the maintenance of the site content. These roles can be delegated to other individuals, but are monitored by the web site manager.

Content Development Role

The role that the classroom teacher, students, and parents have as information is designed and created for the school web site, is influenced by the age of the students. Regardless of the the age of the students, whether preschool or all the way to high school, students need to have an active role in the creation of information for your site. By allowing students to have an active role, your school will be meeting the standards stated by the National Educational Technology Standards found here: NETS for Students. More examples for student involvement in web publishing will be addressed later in this tutorial.

Here are some suggested models that you can use for student, teacher, and parent involvement according to age:

Suggested Team Involvement for School Web Publishing

Preschool-Primary School (PreK-2nd grade)

• Student's Role: Information created by the students is usually curriculum oriented. Student work is usually created by individuals.
• Parent's Role: Help students add content to web pages, research and publish helpful resources especially designed for parents, possibly help in after school web publishing clubs
• Teacher's Role: Introduce students to publishing information on the Internet. Show students how to design published information that requires user input and interaction rather than static information. Check for grammar and spelling.
• Suggested Software: Use WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Netscape Composer or Microsoft's Front Page (see Resource page for additional suggestions).
• Examples of Information created by students:
  • Online Alphabet Book by kindergarten students
  • Abraham Lincoln by first grade students
  • Harriet Tubman by second grade students

Third-Fifth Grades

• Student's Role: Material created by the students still may be curriculum oriented, but with more information and interaction included in the web pages being published. Tips for creating interactive material are included later in this tutorial. Students can begin to work collaboratively to publish material. At these grade levels, students should be able to "peer check" each other's content. For more about peer checking and writer's workshop, see Creating a Writer's Workshop. You will need Adobe Acrobat Reader to open these files.
• Parent's Role: Parents are an important facilitator as students gain confidence and knowledge for writing web pages. Parents may research and publish helpful resources especially designed for parents and possibly help in after school web publishing clubs
• Teacher's Role: The teacher is also a facilitator as students gain confidence in publishing information for the Internet. The teacher also monitors the development of resources, checks for grammar and spelling, and guides students in designing content that requires user input and interaction rather than static information. Information on how to do this will be included later in this tutorial.
• Suggested Software: Use WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Netscape Composer or Microsoft's Front Page (see Resource page for additional suggestions).
• Examples of Information created by students:
  • Underground Railroad by 3rd-4th grade students
  • The Polar Bears by 5th grade students
  • Falmouth School Web Team
  • Great Oaks Elementary School Web Team

 

Sixth-Twelfth Grade

• Student's Role: Content for the school/classroom web site can be done entirely by students. Students should work collaboratively to create content for web site.
• Parent's Role: Parents may help to gather resources about the community to help students publish information regarding community businesses, health, and/or environmental issues. Parent input is vital for students to understand what resources need to be developed on the school web site to help with home and school communication (grades, e-mail, addresses of staff, etc.)
• Teacher's Role: Teacher is also a facilitator as students gain confidence and knowledge in publishing information for the Internet. The teacher also monitors the development of resources, checks for grammar and spelling, and guides students in designing content that requires user input and interaction rather than static information. Information on how to do this will be included later in this tutorial. Teacher also checks to be sure the published information meets the corporation web publishing policy.
• Suggested Software: Students can use WYSIWYG HTML editors such as Netscape Composer or Microsoft's Front Page, but may start to write HTML using notepad (see Resource page for additional suggestions).
• Examples of Information:
  • Klein High School Web Team
  • Avoyelles High School Web Team
  • Bingham High School Web Team