Book about school sites. Why design a website? Informational Addresses

Why design a website?

The first question, of course, will be: “Why design? You can find 3-4 school sites on the Internet that you like, and on this basis you can already give the programmer a task. ” For all the seeming logic of this approach, it will be necessary for those who think so to try to convince.

A school site, like any other, is a complex information system. When creating it, it is necessary to take into account and analyze a whole range of factors: who will be the consumer of the information on your site, what is really advisable to post on the site from school life, what will be its structure, etc.
It also makes sense to have clear answers to the following questions:

• Do we need a school site at all? Can we explain exactly why, or just “to be”?
• Is there something in our educational practice that cannot be realized without the existence of a site, and if not, why should we create a site?
• What will we gain with the advent of the site and what will we lose at the same time?
• Do we have enough assets (financial, human, organizational) not only to create it, but also to support and develop?

Why is it so complicated? After all, you can take a pen and paper, draw a certain initial list of menu items on the site and proceed with the software implementation. And if you need to add something, then you can turn it on over time.
Unfortunately, this is not the case. With this approach, several adverse outcomes are possible.

Firstly, you did not answer the most important question, without which a competent school site could not exist: what is the uniqueness, feature of your school, what will distinguish your site from dozens and hundreds of others? There is no answer here - your site will be a clone of the standard structure of the school web resource, a “general” site, it will not be able to provide the user with anything special, concrete, useful *.

* At first glance, it might seem that the question is not important, especially in light of the fact that dozens of sites are similar to each other. But if that were so, then the problem of creating a school site would not exist at all - one could offer a single optimal structure for everyone and stop there. Meanwhile, there is something that distinguishes many, many school sites in structure, appearance, information flow. What? It is precisely the features of the OS that the site represents, and they must be well aware.

Secondly, in any structure of a complex system (and this is what we create), there will be blocks in which sections appear, and in them, in turn, headings. And the creation of such a multi-level hierarchy (tree) is a question of a holistic view of the system. If, having thoughtfully not building it, you immediately begin implementation, difficulties may arise. With the advent of new elements that you consider it necessary to include in the site menu, blocks that are uneven in volume will appear, the same thing under different names will simultaneously appear in several parts of the structure, and users are unlikely to be able to catch your logic for placing information. As a result, we get a site with confusing, inconvenient navigation, in which the visitor simply "gets lost." Such an uncomfortable site is unlikely to be actively visited.

And finally, the last. A site is not just a once and forever created system. Whatever you come up with at the initial stage, in six months or a year there will appear structural elements and information that you did not think about and which do not fit into the originally created framework. In a thoughtful, flexible and open for updates structure, new elements can be integrated easily, without violating the general logic. In hastily formulated, they will be like a passenger flying after the warning “Caution, the doors are closing!” into the "rubber" car, where there’s nowhere to get up. Probably, these arguments are quite enough for the reader to be convinced: site design is an important issue, the solution of which will largely determine the further development of the resource.

You can start designing with the following steps. First of all, it is necessary to determine the circle of people who will be engaged in this design. At the first stage, perhaps, there will be a fairly small group, which will include the director, deputy for water management (BP), deputy for IT (if any), an informatics teacher. First, the members of the group will “look around”. Why is this group essentially “administrative” in composition? Because the entire information about the school is owned by the administrative team, the teachers, as well as the escort service employees, are informed only within their competence. That's why at the first stage - the design stage - those who have concentrated all the information about the institution, about different areas and aspects of its activity should work in their hands. Clear,

For a short time, each member of the design team independently carries out a review of the school sites existing today on the Web. The easiest way to do this is to type in the Yandex search engine a simple query: “school site”. Browse through 10–20 different school sites to create a “like it, don't like it” impression. Since in a few years a certain tradition of creating OS sites has already been formed to a certain extent, you will have a primary idea of ​​what you want to see on your school’s website in the future.

The result of this work should be the answers to two questions: “ Why does our school need a website? "And" What can our school get thanks to a good site?»Pay attention to the marking of the word" ours. " I repeat, you are not creating a school site at all, but a unique site of your school.

Accordingly, it is intended to reflect not only the typical areas of activity inherent in each public institution, but also the unique that distinguishes your particular school from others.

When everyone answers this question for themselves, the members of the group need to gather again and exchange views, identify “overlapping areas” and come to an initial idea of ​​how the school’s site looks.

Informational Addresses

After formulating the initial idea of ​​the school site, we recommend that you contact the information recipients of the system being created and understand who will be users of your site. This must be done necessarily, because only a resource can be recognized as successful, satisfying the informational needs of those for whom it was created *. An adequate understanding of the specifics of information requests of the system’s recipients is already an exit to the structure of your future website.

* Do not blame the authors for banality: this would not be worth talking about if there were dozens of school sites without any addressing and taking into account the specifics of visitors. To whom they turn is a mystery not only for visitors, but, apparently, for the authors.

Let's try to reflect on this, highlighting the main user groups and, if necessary, differentiating them into subgroups.

It seems obvious to us that the information recipients are the five main groups of visitors *: parents, teachers, students, managers of different levels, partners (the sequence of recipients in this list is not important.). Let us consider each of these groups in more detail, because it is not enough to simply state this list: it alone does not give much.

* In our conversation, the concepts of “information recipient” and “visitor” are not synonymous. Creating a site with a focus on the “user in general” is pointless and impossible: anyone can enter the site. Another thing is the user on whom we focus, to whom we want to convey information, on whose response we are counting. This will be the informational addressee.

Parent. Obviously, this is perhaps the most difficult of all the recipients. Why?

Firstly, he is outside the system (in the educational context - unprofessional), his view of the school is not identical to the pedagogical one, because he looks at us from the point of view of the comfort of the system for his specific child, from the point of view of his own ideas about what should be, which are formed by his own - unique - experience.

Secondly, this addressee is heterogeneous, on the basis of this it is difficult to unambiguously determine its information requests. Moreover, for us he is one of the most important recipients. Therefore, we will try to reflect on what different groups of parents of our students would like to know about the school - real and potential.

First of all, you need to understand that the information requests of parents whose children are in elementary school and parents whose children are in high school will be very different from each other. Experience shows that safety and comfort issues are very important for parents of babies. Parents of high school students are more interested in educational prospects: where did the graduates of recent years go, how did they pass the exam, etc.

However, there is something in common that worries everyone and always is the content of education at school. And we, as a rule, are not able to answer these questions clearly and intelligibly. We are used to certain cliches, our professional cliches (“an educational program of basic general education with in-depth study of subjects of the natural science cycle based on information and communication technologies”, “the use of interactive forms of education”, “profiling of high school”, “the formation of functional literacy and general cultural competence ”, etc.). For an ordinary parent, even with a high level of education, there is nothing behind these words, they are as if in a foreign language. Such information does not bring together (and awareness is a step towards understanding, and through it to closer), but divides, annoys with incomprehensibility. Therefore worth speaking about the content of education at school with parents, move away from professional language. There is one good principle for presenting educational content for parents. It can be built by telling parents what a child who has completed a specific stage of education at your school will know and be able to. Moreover, in this way not only information about the basic, but also about additional education can be presented. Of course, it is not at all necessary to write that at the end of the 7th grade a child in Russian should know all parts of speech, be able to isolate the participial and participial passages, etc., and so on for each subject studied. To get an idea of ​​the standard, “standard” requirements, you can send the parent to the official websites where the requirements for the mandatory minimum content for the subjects of the curriculum are presented,

What exactly is meant here? Suppose your school pays special attention to subjects of the natural science cycle, you cooperate with research organizations dealing with environmental issues, and organize high school practice for high school students. These aspects of educational activity are atypical and, therefore, give certain results in excess of the intended basic program. That's worth writing about them. We emphasize: not only about additional opportunities for students, but also about the results that we get as a result of using these opportunities. These results can be associated with an increased level of knowledge, and with the formation of subject and subject skills, and with career guidance.

It is rational to present such information about the expected learning outcomes by educational level.

In general, it is very important to be able to simply and clearly present the “highlights” of your educational program. You actively use non-traditional forms of education (projects, collective learning methods (CSR)), start early to form a research culture in children, focus on the development of logical thinking, environmental behavior, communicative culture, you have an established system of additional education that allows you to identify and implement creative the potential of each child, to attach him to the values ​​of culture - write about it, but write simply, explain in a clear language so that it is understandable Sionalu.

What else do all parents want to know? Of course, they are interested in the educational conditions, which include ensuring safety, organizing leisure activities, the work of the dining room, medical care, the condition of the library and the media library, the provision of the educational process with equipment, etc.

It is very important for parents to know who and on what issues at school contact, which deputy director oversees what issues, how does the support service (psychologist, speech therapist, social teacher) work.

Parents are also interested in school traditions, rules, requirements that apply to children, because this is largely the face of the school and the key to successful adaptation of the child to the learning environment.

We emphasize once again: it is very difficult to model the whole diversity of parental information queries. Try to identify them realistically. To do this, you can simply at the parent meetings offer a questionnaire with questions about what information about the school is missing for parents, what information is important for them, so that they would like to know on the basis of what knowledge about the school they made their choice when they brought their child here ( especially this question is important to ask parents in elementary school: for them it is very fresh and relevant memories). Such a survey will allow you to identify parental information requests and create an adequate structure of the site section addressed to parents.

Pupils. This group is also heterogeneous: students in schools - at the same time we highlight specific age groups,students preparing for admission (meaning, of course, first of all, high school students, “applicants” of primary school will relate to the group of “parents”), school graduates .

Let's start with those who are directly in school. Pupils are a group that is located inside the school, they basically know a lot, and at the same time, the circle of information that they own is usually limited to certain limits - class, parallels. In addition, the information comes to them from other sources - from class teachers, teachers, on school radio, from information stands, etc. What do they want to know about? Does it make sense for them in the site as a source of information? Of course, the most rational thing to ask about this is from themselves - as well as from parents.

However, here you can present some of the most general considerations. First of all, they relate to the system of continuing education. Choosing a section, circle, club, special course, the child, as a rule, is not sufficiently informed. This informational “failure” can help overcome the site. For example, you can provide a variety of information about additional education: photographs, reviews of those involved in a particular children's association, circle, studio, section, descriptions of certain aspects of the activity, products of the activities of various associations - where possible. In this case, the child choosing a circle, club or section will have the opportunity to make a choice more consciously - on the basis of sufficiently complete information.

Another area related to the system of further education is information on the possibilities of receiving it outside the school. The site may contain a list of circles of the regional House of Children's Creativity, sections of a sports school, district children's clubs, etc. This valuable information is often closed to children, and a school alone can hardly satisfy all various children's interests.

Information on student achievements can be regularly posted on the site. Here you can present the winners of olympiads, sports, creative contests. Such a section, popularizing achievements, representing those who seek positive self-realization, is of great educational value.

Another area that is especially relevant for high school students is information about exams and intermediate certification. In the possible section of the site "Preparing for exams" you can place exam tickets, options for last year's examinations, the results of passing exams last year's graduation (including the exam). If in high school there is a credit system, then you can post on the website a list of tests (for example, for six months) and questions and tasks for them. Elements of distant learning can appear on the website in the section “Preparing for ...” (recommendations for preparing for an essay, examinations, and a written survey).

Another interesting section is “Professional consultation”. Here information relevant for 9-graders about profile classes in schools nearby * can be placed here. And high school students will be interested if links to university sites or other information about the possibilities of continuing education simply appear on the site.

* Of course, not every director reading these lines will respond to such a proposal. But if you think not only about maintaining the completeness of the school, but also about the student, this section becomes meaningful.

If we talk about information addressed to those students who are going to go to school, then in some ways it will intersect with information for parents: this refers to the specifics of the school's educational program, the results of exams and the graduates' admission. Here, just as for parents, accessibility of the language, concreteness and accuracy of information are important, since the choice will be made largely on the basis of what you tell about yourself. It is possible that this will be the same text that the link from different sections will point to.

In addition, if the school intends to take entrance tests for future students, then you can post last year's options for written work or questions for an oral interview so that your “applicants” have the opportunity to prepare.

The third information addressee will be managers . Formally, this group could be divided into three blocks: a) the administration of its OS ; b) higher authorities ; c) administrators of other schools . But it is really unlikely that representatives of subgroups a) and b)will be consumers of school site information. It is hard to imagine that the director and his deputies will choose the space of the school site (even if the section is closed to prying eyes) for working communication: there are many other, more familiar ways *. Also, if you go down from heaven to earth, it’s hard to imagine today the workers of regional and city administrative structures who would be guided by the information presented on the school’s website to assess the quality of its work — they prefer other information channels. Thus, from the group of managers only the third group remains - administrators of other public institutions, your colleagues, who may be interested in the information on your site.

* Here we meet with a moment that we want to pay special attention to. A site is just a tool that may work in certain situations. No need to try to fit into it everything that comes to mind, on the principle of "but let it be, it may come in handy." If the goal for which this or that element of the site is being created can be successfully achieved by other - traditional, more familiar - methods, then such a section does not make sense and it is not necessary to include it. It would not be worth talking about it if a violation of this principle had not been encountered too often.

The sphere of their interests can be a variety of documentation that regulates the activities of your institution (educational program, curriculum, copyright and experimental programs, development program, various provisions, plans, analysis of work, local acts, etc.). General points related to the organization of the school are also interesting. life (service structure, forms of organization of educational process, the content of the experimental work, etc.).

Thus, the school site can be a tool to popularize your established tions in a professional environment.

Educators. This group also needs to be differentiated: a) the teaching staff of their educational institution ; b) teachers of other schools (professional community). On the one hand, explicitly, the teachers of their school should be represented to a certain extent on the school site, on the other hand, they are consumers of the school site *

* There is an interesting observation here: very often, when a school website appears, teachers interestedly study its pages in search of mentions of themselves and their students. This can be a good catalyst for creating specialized “teacher” sections on a site.

First of all, the school’s website for teachers can and should be an entry point into the information space of the Network. Unfortunately, we have to admit that for the most part educators are not the most active and experienced users today. Therefore, it is very useful if the site regularly contains information addressed to subject teachers: links to interesting educational and other resources that can be used to prepare for lessons, dictionaries, encyclopedias, reference books, as well as to contests in which the teacher can participate independently or with your students. The teacher also needs regulatory information - on programs, textbooks, forms of exam organization, etc. Links to the educational press will also be useful - those interesting publications that may be relevant for the teacher, will create for him the opportunity to participate in discussions, exchange views with colleagues on various important issues that concern the pedagogical community today. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. exchange views with colleagues on various important issues that concern the pedagogical community today. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. exchange views with colleagues on various important issues that concern the pedagogical community today. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. exciting pedagogical community today. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. exciting pedagogical community today. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. Such information is also very important for increasing the teacher’s professional competence as a basis for self-education and for stimulating his creative activity, creating conditions for participating in professional competitions, preparing publications, etc. This activity helps to form an adequate self-esteem of the teacher who sees what and how they are working his colleagues in different regions of Russia, and in some cases - to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. This activity contributes to the formation of an adequate self-esteem of the teacher, who sees what his colleagues are working on and how in different regions of Russia, and in some cases to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity. This activity contributes to the formation of an adequate self-esteem of the teacher, who sees what his colleagues are working on and how in different regions of Russia, and in some cases to increase his self-esteem. By the way, experience shows that St. Petersburg teachers are poorly represented in online professional competitions, their activity is low - primarily due to lack of information, and the school site can stimulate this activity.

Another interesting and important point. The school site can become a kind of library of the results of educational research and design activities. This is possible if projects created by students, quality essays and other works will be posted on the site. In this case, the teachers will receive valuable material that will help in the organization of educational research and design work (in fact, the site will present samples to which students can be sent to get acquainted with what they have to do, to see the intended end result of their work). In addition, we will also receive resources for organizing independent educational activities for children. Students can be invited to familiarize themselves with certain works in the process of studying a specific topic.

This material will be relevant both for students - as a resource for self-education, and for the professional community - as a kind of opportunity to “check the clock”, to evaluate themselves in the context of the activities of others.

If we consider the site as an opportunity to accumulate the scientific and methodological experience of the school, then materials of this kind (methodological developments, programs, scenarios, monitoring methods and results, etc.) are already of interest to subjects of other schools, and in this regard, your site can become an indicator the quality of the pedagogical experience of the educational institution and the informal methodological center of the district on certain issues.

A school site may also be of interest to educators looking for work. The school is interested not only in its “own” student, but also in its “own” teacher, who easily joins the team and adopts an unspoken organizational culture, will correspond to the level of teaching, profess appropriate professional and human values. It is obvious that for both the teacher and the school, the site as a form of “first acquaintance” will be able to set the stage for fruitful cooperation. Let us give an example: if it is stated on your school’s website that extracurricular activities are one of the most significant areas of activity, it is unlikely that it will make sense to go to you to a person who is convinced that the school is taught primarily in the classroom, and the family educates and organizes leisure , and do not flirt and flirt with children.

Partners. This is the last group of informational addresses of the school site highlighted here. Talking about it is also not easy, because the system of relationships and forms of interaction between the school and other institutions was developed, perhaps, only in the pair “school - university”. However, in this case, a wider circle of participants can also act as “partners”: a) cultural and educational (other secondary educational institutions, universities, cultural institutions: museums, libraries, foundations, ...); b) commercial (sponsors or structures focused on obtaining financial profit from cooperation with the school, for example, tenants, suppliers of various kinds of goods and services); c) international - implementing cross-cultural projects.

Partners may be primarily interested in status information, namely the achievements of the school, its image, and how much cooperation with it can enhance the status of the partner himself. However, partners may have other interests, in particular, related to the joint implementation of cultural, educational and commercial projects. For example, if you have a good quality of teaching a foreign language, then you will be interested in organizations involved in international educational tourism. If you have good experience in using information technology in the educational process, it is possible that companies that supply a variety of "training" equipment or programs may contact you. For such firms, your school can act as a partner - a platform for testing certain technical training tools or software products, for conducting training seminars, etc. In this case, it is quite possible for you to receive real commercial benefits (the purchase of equipment at preferential prices or even free deliveries for organizing experimental testing). That is why it is important on the site to clearly, expressively and specifically present the strengths of your educational activities, your non-standard educational results, your opportunities, ideas, achievements.

As for international partners, today the Network implements a lot of cross-cultural projects that ensure the interaction of children and youth from different countries. Your site, especially if it has an English version (at least in several sections that provide an idea of ​​you as a potential interesting educational partner), can attract foreign like-minded colleagues.

This list of potential recipients - consumers of information from your site in no way claims to be exhaustive. It is possible that your list will be somewhat different from the one presented above. Here, the specifics of your school play a large role - its location, the social composition of students, profile, “highlights” of the school and other factors. Some blocks of this scheme will be important for you, something will seem optional, something will be omitted. Perhaps you have a different view of your informational recipients or have a different idea of ​​the content of the information that will be relevant to them. This is a normal process of developing your own site structure unique to your OS. Another thing is important here:

• When designing a site, it is necessary to clearly and accurately identify those to whom it will be addressed;
• it is important to clearly understand the information requests of your potential users (they can and should be identified in dialogue with those whom you see as informational recipients of the site);
• you need to understand well that the language of the site should be oriented, including to a person who does not belong to the professional community and does not own specific terminology, therefore, when creating a site, you need to learn to talk about our educational realities in a generally accessible language.

Having identified the list of those to whom the information of your site will be oriented, it is advisable to go beyond the circle of the development team and organize something like a business game. Having formed teams according to the number of recipient groups (in our case, 5: parents, students, management, teachers, partners), to offer them, having entered the proposed role, to formulate potential information requests of users of their group. There is an urgent question: whom to include in these groups? This can be high school students, and parents, and teachers. But it is advisable to conduct such a game when the outline of the structure is already looming and it is necessary to clarify, fine-tune, test those ideas that have been put forward by a group of developers. Another way is possible: first to hold such a large-scale game and collect ideas from a large number of people, and then to process, refine,

We emphasize once again: of course, each of us was a student, the majority act as parents, so it’s quite possible to “get used to the role” and formulate information requests of these groups, but the information will be fuller, more specific, richer, more useful if you manage to include in the groups directly parents, high school students who have school partners.

Regardless of the stage of the business game, its scenario is seen as follows. Each small group is a particular destination of the site. Participants should, having entered into a role, assume that it can and should be interesting to learn about the school and which information (from all that is interesting) is adequate to the site. These requests need to be organized, structured and based on them try to create site headingsfor each of the groups of consumers of information. Working groups present their versions of information requests and the proposed menu structure to the development team. The structure that results from this work is the most comprehensive list of menu items for your site , not an abstract school. From it you can already formulate a list of the necessary components for inclusion in the structure of the site.