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Showcase – www.PlumTreeMontessori.com

Client Objectives:

  • Provide resources for parents of future students.
  • Present a professional appearance and facilitate parents’ education on the benefits of the Montessori system and why their child would benefit by attending.
  • Support existing students, parents and faculty with features like a school and event calendar, newsletter, blog postings, photos and videos (password protected), faculty bio, etc . .
  • Facilitate communication amongst faculty, parents, students and the community

Schools are now putting up their own websites but many have yet to effectively utilize this web based technology to bring real benefits to students, parents, teachers, and school officials. As we all know, the Internet is one of the most effective communications technologies ever created. A school website can expand opportunities for parents to communicate with the school and become more informed about the education of their children. Teachers can use the school website to share ideas with other teachers, parents and the community at large. A school website can also allow parents to actively collaborate and participate with both teachers and school officials.

As we began to work on the Plum Tree Montessori website we tried to utilize the site, email/RSS and blog technology to greatly eliminate barriers in involving parents in school. Parents like it when they are informed about upcoming exams, activities, and other items of interest about their children’s education. We wanted to enable Plum Tree to tap into this inherent emotional connection between parent and child more effectively.

Deconstruction of a school website

  1. School information – The website must include the school’s history, mission, philosophy, and plans. And in the case of a Montessori school it must explain the ideals and philosophy espoused by Maria Montessori as many may not be familiar with her groundbreaking work. The website must also provide the address of the school and directions on how to get there. We easily integrated Google Maps into the the site and trained the staff how to do the same for future school events and locations moving forward.
  2. Contact information – A school must provide a way for parents to contact teachers, school officials and other parents via an online directory of phone numbers, physical addresses as well as email addresses. We chose to create a password protect section of the site that would house this and other information. We also felt it was imperative to give the staff and faculty email addresses at PlumTreeMontessori.com as it gives a better impression if the teachers have addresses under the school’s domain name.
  3. School and Classroom updates – Keeping the contents of the school website fresh and updated is the hallmark of a well-planned website but it requires ongoing effort. This is where SitePlanIt.com excels. We enabled Plum Tree Montessori to achieve this via a leading internet Content Management Systems (CMS) and by supplying a combination of both on site and video training. School updates can easily include intra and inter-school events, announcements of upcoming parent-teacher conferences, and holidays among others. Special events within the school such as a graduation ceremony can be captured using digital cameras and posted on the school website. A digital video of the school play can be posted on the website so that parents can view them after work or on weekends.
  4. Educational resources – The school website can also be positioned as the student’s portal to the Internet. The school website can contain electronic books, teaching aids, journals and links to other useful websites. Teachers and librarians could review, suggest, and maintain these online materials. This kind of information can also help the parents in need of materials to help the students at home. Teachers will also benefit from this service. Teachers can use the website to collect the materials they have used in the classroom for their use in succeeding school years. New teachers will have the leverage of having good teaching materials readily available and avoid having to redo the research and compilation. Teachers may even post the lesson plan so that students and parents can know the topics in advance if they want to.
  5. Interaction opportunities – The school website can host electronic forums where parents, teachers, and school officials discuss various relevant topics. Unlike a PTA meeting where ideally everybody must be present before the discussion is started, an electronic forum allows a person to speak up at virtually any time. The contents of a forum are available for future use and can also be used by school officials for conducting informal online surveys involving teachers and parents. Parents can start their own forum to seek advice and share ideas on how to best help their children in their schooling. Parents can even provide information on where to buy the best school supplies or what to do during summer breaks.Teachers can use electronic forums as an aid to teaching. A teacher can post a topic for discussion and ask the students to submit their reaction using the electronic forum as their homework for the weekend. Electronic forums can be used by students seeking help from other students like a freshman student looking for a project for the science fair. Even alumni can be allowed to participate and share their experiences inside and outside the school.
  6. Family-school connection – A school website can link families to their children’s classroom. Through the website, teachers can inform parents about curricula and course objectives. The classroom webpage can display upcoming and completed projects of the students. It can also provide information about homeworks and suggestions on how parents can help their children at home. Photographs and diaries from exposure trips can also be published in the classroom webpage.
  7. Accessibility – We also felt that it was important that we enable parents, faculty and staff access to the site via iPhone and WAP devices. This allows easy access to all the information while on the go.

Conclusion

A school website is one of the most effective and cheapest technologies to foster communication among students, parents, teachers, and school officials. Developing an effective website takes time and resources but if done right, the benefits to the school community are enormous. SitePlanIt.com helped Plum Tree Montessori School achieve this.