Still designing and Organizing my Website

Looking at various school district websites gave me many ideas I can use as I design my website.

The Fayette County Schools website adheres pretty well to the stated standards in the articles read for class in regards to navigability and ease of use.  The site uses neutral colors and leads with personal stories from around the district.  It offers RSS feeds and a site Search engine. (I’m thinking of incorporating one of those in my site now.) It has a nice FAQs section prominently placed and appears to be updated frequently. The overall look of the site is uniform though each school’s individual site does not conform to the same standards for color/graphics/updating etc. The district would probably benefit from a content manager in that regard. Other than the patronizing tips to parents (Eating breakfast or lunch with your child at school will make them feel special), I feel this district gets a lot of things  right.

 On Organizing my website-

 My teaching units are organized by historical periods so I think I’ll stick to that method of organization (Time) for my website. This time-based organization also adheres to my underlying paradigms. My site is geared towards other drama teachers and secondary-level drama students not theatre-goers or professional actors who would benefit from an entirely different method of organization.

I like the idea of mapping the browsing flow of the site with post-it notes. It reminds me of the old days before word-processing when “cut and paste” was  actually “cut” and “paste”. Because of the educational nature of my planned site, organizing it in a linear sequence with supporting digressions makes the most sense.

Here's a rough initial plan on wire frame.

https://cacoo.com/diagrams/GK73afeZmBZ0VMfc

I liked Weebly a lot when we used it for a class assignment, but I wasn't sure it allowed for enough customization. So I've been playing around with Wix.com. I like how easy it is to customize a template or add a feature (Facebook Like button,Live Twitter feed, opportunities to go mobile or add e-commerce). They offer free hosting and actually have theatre-related templates to advertise shows or post your resume show biz-style with imdb and show links! They had lots of examples to explore. The various features and the clean looking  designs available will give my site more appeal and keep it from looking quite as "educational".

Designing My Website

   As I've started to plan this website it has occurred to me that I've needed a website as a teacher for as long as  I've been a teacher. As a drama teacher, no school I've ever taught at has ever had anything much in the way of resource materials available for my content area. My last school didn't even have drama textbooks and had no intent to buy any either. No school library has ever seemed to have more than half a dozen drama-related texts and an outdated box of  freebies from the local public television station.
   As a result I've made a whole lot of materials/project sheets/instructional videos over the years. A website would be an opportunity to corral all of my resources in one handy digital cyber-source. The students could access the site for their readings/assignments etc and other drama teachers might find useful material as well. Some instructional videos I posted on YouTube for use by my classes now have thousands of hits so I know somebody is using them.
  At present I'm planning a fairly static resource site which I'll host commercially. After the 40-80 hours I imagine it will take to put up the 30 "pages " currently planned, I can see that this site will require about two hours a week to tweak, maintain and update the blog. All content in progress can be stored on my external hard-drive (useful at school when the wireless is down too.) The initial site could be up and running by November 15,2012  with a commitment of 10-15 hours a week from now until then.  I'll have to pay for hosting, but that's the only cash expense predicted right now.
   I polled students last year when I was teaching and at that point at least 85% of my students had home/phone internet access.  100% had school access as Fayette County is pretty technologically savvy. My ultimate goal for the site is that it enables me to "flip" my drama classroom in order to efficiently maximize classroom time. When I'm spending my class time focused on activities rather than readings and instructional video that could be viewed before class at home I'll know the site is a success