As the Media Specialist, you need to have a school website that meets the needs of the students and teachers. However, you probably are not a web designer and you need to keep it simple. It’s important to focus on what you know and what you are good at and don’t attempt the things that you don’t know.
The first thing you need when developing a web site is a plan. What purpose do you want the web site to serve? Do you have a vision for this web site and how it will look?
There are several questions that you need to ask yourself when starting to develop the site. First, who is your audience? Teachers, parents, students and administrators will be accessing your site to located pertinent information. They will be looking for books they would like to read, information to help them create and teach lessons, recommended reading lists and websites for children.
Second, you need to ask yourself what would make my website successful. It is important at this point to look at other media center web sites to get an idea of what information they include, how they set up their sites, what is appealing to you about the sites, and how easily the sites can be navigated. School Library Websites is a place where you can view examples of difference web sites and get ideas. http://schoollibrarywebsites.wikispaces.com/
Third, how do you want your web site to look? Is it going to be the traditional web site, or are you leaning towards a blog or a wiki? You want to make sure that your site uses complementary and soothing colors. It’s important that the layout design is easy to read and doesn’t confuse the viewer. Are you going to include sidebars, links to other sites, or columns? Just remember, the sky is the limited when it comes to designing your web site.
Fourth, decide what information you want viewers to see on your site. Do you want to highlight any special programs that are going on in the media center? Do you want a link to your OPAC, book lists, or other sites that might be useful to your patrons? The website, 21st Century School Teacher has a wealth of information on nationally known sites. You can access the site at: http://www.21stcenturyschoolteacher.com/cool-websites.html
Finally, how are you going to evaluate your site? It is important that people be able to give you feedback on the site. Are you going to provide a location for comments, or ask patron to email you their comments?
After you have asked yourself all of the questions and developed your plan, you are now ready to build your site. There are things that you should do and things that you should not do when it comes to designing your website. Here are some recommended Do’s and Don’ts of Web Site Design.
Do’s:
1. Do make your web site attractive and useful.
2. Do make the titles on your web page make sense.
3. Do make images that look like buttons act like buttons.
4. Do keep the structure of your web pages consistent throughput your website.
5. Do use standard design styles for you navigation.
6. Do make your web pages viewable at 800 X 600 resolution.
7. Do creative a custom 404 “Page not found” page.
8. Do create a simple site map.
9. Do keep your web pages under 60k in size.
10. Do make your web site easily accessible and user friendly.
Don’ts:
1. Don’t use background music on your web pages.
2. Don’t use busy backgrounds on your pages.
3. Don’t set your type to all capital letters in your body text.
4. Don’t have more than a few words in italics or bold case.
5. Don’t use too many colors in your web site.
6. Don’t use page counters.
7. Don’t use blinking or flashing text.
8. Don’t center everything on your web pages.
9. Don’t force people to download a new browser or special plug-in to see your site.
10. Don’t include “Under Construction” pages.
The most important thing to remember is that your web site is a reflection of you and your media center. You want it to have everything, but still be attractive and easy to use. After looking at the different examples while researching for this blog, I realized that there are several changes that I want to make to my media center web site.
I like your suggestion of first determining who the audience is when planning your website. It would be simple and reduce the amount of information per page if the media center website could be divided out into several pages one for each group that you mentioned (e.g.: students, staff, parents, etc). On each of these pages you could customize the information to better meet the needs of the audience. This would help meet your suggestion of having the page be easily navigable as well. Before this assignment, I hadn’t considered having users evaluate the website but agree with you that it is important for patrons to be able to give you feedback on the site. A google docs survey with options to write in comments would be a great way to address this. Thanks for this wonderful post. It definitely has me thinking about some things I can include when I develop my own page.
ReplyDeleteI think it is a great idea for Media Specialist to have their sites evaluated by other Media Specialists, students, parents and community leaders to ensure that the information is both relevant and timely and receiving their opinions could ensure such. I also like how you broke down the Do’s and the Don’ts of creating a website for a Media Center and I totally agree that in the end it needs to be user friendly. I have gone to many websites that were very attractive, but getting to the information I was seeking became cumbersome. As I result, I would then begin another search for a more user-friendly website. It is also important to keep in mind when creating websites that not everyone is comfortable maneuvering around websites, so SIMPLICITY is important as you mentioned in your blog.
ReplyDeleteAnother thing I would like to point out that that I agree with is that the webpage needs to highlight activities, functions, programs that have taken place at the school. In many ways the Media Specialist also functions as a Historian as they gather information to share/publish with others. Using a website to do such is a fantastic way to encourage parents, students and community members to visit the site. Also creating a section for suggestions/comments/or things a person would like to see is also a great way to continue to enhance the website for the viewers. Doing this will definitely ensure their return to the website.
It is crucial that a web designer understand the target audience. In fact, that is the key concern when attempting to communicate to any audience. Thus, the look of your web site will differ drastically depending on age level if the students are considered part of the target audience. A web site for an elementary school media center would necessarily have to be simple and easy to use. A link might be provided to move parents and teachers to an adult page. A web site for higher grades would not need to be so simple but should still be clear and easy to read.
ReplyDeleteIncluding a feature for response to the web site encourages shareholders to state their needs and to alert the designer of any difficulties in using the site. It might also engender feelings of ownership in the web site and media center.
I love that I could use your blog post as a step-by-step process on how to prepare to create a great media center webpage. Your five steps that you include are all very important to the process including figuring out your audience and then figuring out the content you want to include in your webpage. Your do’s and don’t’s section is also awesome. I hate when I come across a webpage that says “under construction.” I have worked with website building enough to know that you can leave that page out completely while you are building it and then “publish it” when it is ready to go. It is also bothers me when websites have loud music blasting in the background when you first access it. I also think it is important to make sure everything that is supposed to work on the page actually works and that they page is not too busy. You have some great ideas on how to create a great website.
ReplyDeleteI think one of the most importnat things that you have hit on here is to know your audience. I think it is easy to forget that there are different types of patrons that will visit our web site and that each has a different need. I like the idea of having a link to a page for teachers and parents. I also think the idea of having a way for patrons to give feedback about the website is important. As Kelly pointed out this gives the patron a way to state their needs and let you know if something on the web site isn't functioning properly. Even more importantly, it can give them ownership in your school library medai program.
ReplyDeleteI love the steps provided here for building a web page and the do's and dont's. This will help us keep focused as we each work on creating our own web page. The 21st Century Teacher website also has a lot of grat information on it. I have bookmarked it so I can look at it closer to see what tools I might be able to add to my "tool box" so to speak.
I think it is great that you mentioned viewing other media center websites. There is no need to reinvent the wheel. We can all learn from each other. Looking at other websites will give you insight into what works and what does not work so well. Take a look at what information to include. We all have a lot on our plate and it is easy to forget important aspects of the media center which may need to be included on the webpage. Viewing media center websites of schools within the district may help align common policies and procedures. Viewing media center websites of schools outside of the school district may provide new insights into the operation of the media center. I think your last statement about changing your media center website after conducting research is an extremely powerful one. There is always room for improvement. We must actively continue our professional development. We cannot just settle into our position. Technology is a crucial aspect of the media center and we must conduct our own research to best meet the needs of our patrons. Our goal should be to create the best webpage that we possibly can.
ReplyDeleteA good plan and a purpose are both needed to begin construction of a school webpage. Everything that will go onto the webpage should be mapped out to where it will be place ahead of time. Utilizing a plan will save much time and hassle with making any changes. I also like the idea of having teachers evaluate the webpage to make sure they can find what they want without difficulties.
ReplyDeleteThe article that you posted was "right-on" as far as I as concerned. I do not think that there is a single point that I do not agree with in the whole posting. I would like to add a couple of comments. You said not to have a page counter but I would like to have a hit counter. A hit counter, if accessed on a regular basis, will provide good information about how many vivitors have bee on the website. This could help in redesign and updating. As to updating, one of the websites that was reccommended for viewing needs to be updated. The last time it was updated was back in 2008. This has nothing to do with your posting but we all need to be aware of updating. I really like your "# 10 do" about making the site easily accessable and user friendly. Some of the sites I looked at were so hard to navigate. Some of the time it was kinda like my typing, hunt and peck. I had to guess if what I had clicked on was really going to take me where I wanted to go. I do think that there needs to be a lot of thought put in to just who is the audience is and what are the demographics of the audience. If most of the students have internet access at home or if most do not could make a difference in how you put the site together. If school is the only access point for a student, they will not have much time to use the site and therefore you would probably not need to load it up with lots of information and links. Assecc at home would be a completely different story. The same goes for socio-economic and demographics of the parents, parents, and other stakeholders. I still think that your post is excellent and can be very useful in setting up a media center website.
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