Weir Farm Do-It-Yourself Guide

Making or Improving an Educational Website for Kids and Parents/Educators: A Guide for Teachers, Museum Professionals and National Park Service Employees

BACKGROUND

In 1999, Weir Farm National Historic Site, with the design assistance of Bob Barner through Heritage Partners, Inc., developed a web site for kids. It was engaging and whimsical and contained many intriguing ideas, but it lacked depth. Two years later, it was time to complete the web site and make it not only more interactive for kids, but also useful for teachers and parents. In the process of changing the web site, we gathered information for anyone interested in creating a new web site or improving an already established web site. The following list represents the steps in our process.

WHAT TO DO

1. Assign a project coordinator and a team to handle content research and development, graphic design and web site implementation.

We were fortunate to have on our team a volunteer who is an education professor at a local university. Her input proved invaluable, especially in helping us link our activities to state curriculum standards.

Choose a graphic designer and web site developer who will work well together. Many graphic designers today are fluent in web development or have an established relationship with a web designer. The Weir Farm Kids Page project employed the skills of a graphic designer who worked with his own web developer. It is always better to work with an existing design team than worry about creating one from scratch.

Make sure your design team understands the projected comprehension level and age range of your audience. It is very important that the children’s sections of your site are visually or otherwise easily distinguishable from the sections developed for teachers and adults. Graphic designers who specialize in artwork for children's publications are excellent resources for this type of project.

Design standards for web publications vary, but are an important part of web page development. Be sure that your design team understands and follows your institution’s standards. The Weir Farm project was developed under the terms and standards published in the National Park Service’s Director's Order 50. These guidelines are available to the general public and provide a structure for developing your page.

2. Identify objectives/resources/audience. Ask the following questions:

- Who is the intended audience?

- What are we trying to convey?

- How will we convey that information?

- Are we trying to address state or national curriculum content standards?

- Are there already existing resources available (brochures, curriculum guides, other background materials)? Remember that with the proper scanner, you can scan hard copies onto disks for editing and inclusion on your future web site. If you have some already-existing curriculum-based programs that you are proud of and can translate well to the internet, don’t be shy about using them.

- Who will carry out the research, develop content, design and maintain the site? Will you be working with outside consultants?

- What is your budget?

- What is your timeframe to complete the project?

3. Based on the information above, develop two broad outlines. The first summarizes the execution of the project, including a production schedule; the second addresses content.

4. Visit A Museum Professional’s Guide to Educational Website Development at http://www.sfo.com/~lshaffer/website guidelines/index.html

This site is an excellent jumping off point, especially if you are developing an educational web site from scratch. It offers useful guidelines and addresses such issues as internal policies, institutional objectives, content considerations, staffing/equipment/financial resources, and the life of the website after development.

5. Surf the web.

There is a wealth of ideas on the web. Don’t limit yourself to traditional resources such as museums. For instance, many corporations have educational components to their web sites and some of them are pretty clever, utilizing state of the art graphics and animation. Even if you don’t have a big budget, some the showiest ideas can be scaled back.

6. If you plan to address state or national content standards, acquire them from your state’s Department of Education or the US Department of Education (the web sites have downloadable versions). Study them carefully and incorporate them as you develop your content.

7. Once you have identified your objectives, get feedback from a sampling of your intended audience.

Ideally, this is a group of teachers or kids who are already familiar with your organization. You might consider approaching an advisory group if your organization has one in place. If not, contact subject matter coordinators at local school districts. You have a few options available to you once you make the contacts:

- Ask to make a presentation at a staff meeting. Following the presentation, distribute questionnaires such as one the one we developed (Click here to download letter and questionnare).

- Organize a focus group consisting of teachers/administrators from a few representative schools.

- Our project involved completing an already existing web site. We had an extensive list of teachers and administrators who had assisted us on a previous project, and we asked them to look at and offer suggestions on our current web site. We sent a cover letter and questionnaire to them and thanked respondents with a token gift (we gave them note cards). Note that we also addressed the need for post-development feedback from students.

Dear Teacher or Administrator:
I am writing to you now to ask that you assist us once again, this time with our kids web site. We are seeking to make it an effective tool for teachers and students in the classroom. This is where we need your feedback. We ask that you take 15-20 minutes to review the web site and respond to the list of questions attached. Once you have completed the form, please return it in the postage paid envelope enclosed. Our goal is to have your responses in hand no later than ________.

We do understand that there are many demands on your time, but hope that you will assist us in this important endeavor. As a token of our appreciation, we will gladly send you _________________________.

We know that many of you are already actively using the Internet in the classroom. To maximize the effectiveness of this pilot project, we need to collect feedback from students as well. If you are interested in facilitating an evaluation of our revised web site by your students, please indicate at the end of the questionnaire. Again, we plan to offer tokens of appreciation (to be determined) to the students who participate.

Thank you in advance for your time and energy on behalf of _______________.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me
via email at ______________.

Sincerely, Encl.

- questionnaire

- site brochure

PLEASE ANSWER THE FOLLOWING BEFORE VISITING OUR WEB SITE

School Name: _________________________________________

Elementary _____ Middle _____ High School _____

School Address, including zip code: ____________________________________________________

____________________________________________________

School Phone:_______________________

School Web site address, if available: ______________________

Your name: _________________________

Your home address: __________________

Your email address:___________________

What grade/s do you teach? ________________________________

What subject/s do you teach? _______________________________

Do you have access to computers in your classroom? Yes ___ No ___

- If so, what is the ratio of students to computers? (#) _____ students have access to (#) _____ computers

- How often do you explore the Internet with your students?

________________________________________________

Please identify the types of student-centered activities in which you engage computers (e.g., word-processing; educational software; Internet research; web site-based learning activities; homework assignments;…)

______________________________________________________

If you already use specific web sites in the classroom, please identify the most effective web sites you’ve encountered and briefly describe why they are effective: ______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

If you do not currently use web sites for student-centered learning activities, why not? ______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

AT THIS TIME, PLEASE VISIT THE WEBSITE @ _______________________

Take a few minutes to navigate around the site before you respond to the questions below. Remember that your input will help us redesign the web site to meet general curricular objectives. At present, it serves only as a general introduction to ____________ for young audiences.

In your opinion, what grade levels does this web site most effectively address? ______________________________________________________

Which of the following would make this a useful web site for you and/or your students? Please all check areas that apply. If you feel strongly about certain areas, please circle your check marks:

____ communicate with our organization

____ links to research resources

____ lesson plans

____ independent or small group activities within the web site

____ downloadable worksheets (with related standards)

____ homework component

____ discussion questions/research topics

____ off-line student activity suggestions

____ downloadable field trip guide

____ pre- and post- visit activities for field trips

____ bulletin board for posting student work

____ other (are we missing anything?)

Do you have any other specific suggestions for ways we can make our web site an effective tool for classroom instruction? ______________________________________________________

______________________________________________________

How likely are you to use our improved web site in your classroom?(circle one)

VERY LIKELY LIKELY POSSIBLE NOT LIKELY NO INTEREST

Would you be willing to let us pilot our new, improved web site with your students? YES NO

If so, what grade? ____ # of students? _____ Subject matter? __________

Thank you once again for your time. Please enclose in the postage-paid envelope and return by__________________.

8. Utilize your research, including the results of your questionnaire/focus groups, to amend your content outline. Develop any additional components.

9. If necessary, request permission to use outside material/images. It is extremely important that you obtain permission to use any outside material/ images before you post them on your web site.

10. If you haven’t already done so, now is the time to share the expanded content outline with the graphic designer and web site designer.

11. Work back and forth with the graphic designer and web site designer on any questions or needs they may have.

12. After the site is up, pilot it with test groups, preferably a sampling of teachers and at least one class of students. Make any necessary changes that are possible within the scope of your project.

13. Publicize your site through targeted mailings, search engines, appropriate listservs and websites.