Notes+from+10-15+PUSD+Meeting

Notes from 10/15 PUSD Meeting:

Phase I

1. Add a CURRICULUM to the homepage to provide info on schools and programs, with subheadings to include: • Tech, GATE, Special Ed., Music, Drama, Library, Arts, Sports, Science, etc. • What to expect in Grades K-12 • State standards • District benchmarks • PUSD Curriculum Council and its textbook adoption • How parents can help with their child’s homework If there is a library link from the district site, the library link should be directly from the homepage and then the user should be able to link to a specific school library website. Each school site should have a library link from their home page

2. Online registration link

3. Teacher emails should be made available – option of a master list via the district site or a teacher list made available at school websites; teacher preferences for communication would also be disclosed; regardless, most important is that teacher addresses be provided in a manner that would prevent the list being used for spam purposes.

4. Positions and Approaches of the District, its mission statement and philosophy / K-12 vision of promote respect and collaboration should be articulated on homepage; suggestion of using Millenium’s content as a model;

5. New Parent/Residents of Piedmont, provide info about registration, etc via printable handbook in pdf format, at site level; suggested that this be included in the drop down menu of the tab “Community Resources”

6. FAQ section to provide information about the routines of PUSD – please suggestion FAQs to include if this section is provided, eg. District processes and routines like calendar process

7. Provide info to Piedmont citizens about Parcel tax, and Measure E

8. Add a Suggestions tab – to the footer or website utilities menu

9. Provide information to new parents about which elementary school children would attend based on their address in Piedmont, (with disclaimer about enrollment shifts.)

10. Images on homepage – suggestion of using more warmer/personal images with people, perhaps rotating fields, if pictures of children are used, that they be non-identifiable

11. District calendar – one master calendar maintained by the district to start; decide what content to keep on district calendar; who will manage the calendar?; what is the best way to present “all this information” and keep it user friendly; David and Stephanie are going to collaborate on deciding which calendar platform best suits the District’s needs. - eg Google calendar; also a suggestion of customizable calendars to allow users to subscribe to specific calendars; each site must use the same calendar interface to allow for integration at a future date, and as such, should WAIT until the launch of the District website before moving forward.

12. “Hot Items” get its own button on the homepage

13. Archiving of topical news – decide where and how long to keep archived news articles, etc that are no longer “current/hot” FYI - Wordpress automatically archives all “news” posts by date and by category; these can be easily called out in a specific area of the site at a later date (DM).

14. What’s for Lunch? Section plus link on homepage

15. I'm confused about which of the above items are proposed for the district site and which for individual schools. Homepages need to look simple and user friendly. It is easy to overwhelm the viewer.

Area of concern on the developer side:

1. CONTENT - where will they come from? Who will administer and manage? Suggested that Community Guide be used, Handbook text also as source of content; David M specifically states that WE NEED TO FIND THIS TEXT AND SPELL OUT EXACTLY WHICH PROGRAMS WE’RE GOING TO FEATURE THIS AS A HOMEPAGE LINK.

Who can make changes to web pages? I would like to be able to update the library (Wildwood) page my self so that I can use it for student projects and provide instructions and up to date websites.

2. DUPLICATION OF DATA – with this much information, how do we best keep from duplicating data and making the site “too much information”

3. TRAINING, CONVENTIONS, PROTOCOL – provide teachers and tech staff sufficient time to prepare content and to use templates in Phase II; to develop Best Practices and protocol for internet use;

Phase II

Teacher webpage templates • Provide templates to offer consistent look and organization for teachers interested in managing their own webpage and providing downloadable worksheet, etc in pdf format • Teachers to use WordPress to add and edit their templates of teacher info and classroom updates • Suggest that web data requiring large bandwidth be hosted on another server, eg. Sound or video streaming • Forum/resources for teachers to discuss supplies, professional development seminars, etc. Could be implemented as a Wiki, blog, OR forum, but would be private, password-protected access to eliminate liability for District.

Parent email database access (for use by teachers and administrators) is still under discussion. • It would certainly need to be behind a password-protected wall, but individual parent groups have a better database than does the District & these are currently proprietary. • An opt-in option on the RSS page is a possibility, but would require a “your email will be secure” disclaimer and someone to manage the database.