A new Look, Design & Name
With the new school year comes a newly redesigned web site. The original ICRS website has been in existence for over 5 years now and was beginning to show its age and limitations. The new site is using modern open-source software that is capable of expansion and accommodating the changes we will need moving into the future.
Why Change
A school is the perfect organization suited towards having a comprehensive website. 20th Century websites were about one-way communication between the website and the readers. In the 21st century Web 2.0 world websites need to be about interaction and two way communication.
Students
Sometimes students are regulated to a lesser user on a school website. This is a critical mistake, not only are out students the group most invested in the school, they also are the group most likely to adopt Web technology. Students are probably primarily a consumer of information on the website. A healthy website should also have mechanisms for interaction
Teachers and Administrators
A school website can make a huge difference in the way a teacher can communicate and educate. The list is endless, for example publishing course notes, homework, and project information. The biggest challenge for teachers is that adding the web to their toolbox can be overwhelming. A well designed website with professionals eager to assist teachers in adopting the technology into their teaching is necessary for success.
Parents
The third leg of the stool that is a successfully school is the parents. A school which is able to engage the parents into its community is one where the students and school are more successful. To that end the website can be a powerful tool to achieve that engagement.
Why change the name?
Put easily are we ICR school or our we ICRS school. When people go to type the name of the website in our minds we are thinking icrs school and typing icr school isn't as natural. But rest assured the icrschool.com and icrsschool.com domain names are both owned by ICRS and both point to and provide the same services.
Overview of the new website
The Parts
The primary navigation bar is present at the top of each page it is used to navigate to the primary area of content that you are interested in viewing. Depending upon if you are logged in as a registered user or not will determine what selections are available. As depicted this is the menu available to the general population (anonymous users).
Quick Links are available on every page of the website; they provide quick access to areas frequently needed. This position also displays custom sub-menus when you enter into different content areas of the website. For example when in "About Us" an "About Us" sub-menu appears with additional links to areas. Again depending upon if you are logged into the system or not will determine which menu options are displayed.
Login is something completely new to the website. We now have both public and private content areas. We now have the ability to post content that is only intended to be viewed by members of our school community examples are; photos, school news (not released to newspapers), Notices & Reminders, Forms & Publications. We hope this will encourage and reassure parents to use the site and feel comfortable about information being posted there. So sign up for an account now and see what you are missing. We will audit the accounts so that only members of the school community will be able to obtain and keep accounts.
This is the main content area where stories and articles appear.
Search. Finally the ability to search specifically for what you are looking for. The picture that displays in the background of the area on top of the screen will rotate through various pictures with each page refresh. Keep an eye open for people and places around the school that you recognize. The A+ A A- allows you to increase, reset and decrease the font size used on the website. This will be remembered from session to session if you have browser cookies enabled.
NewsFlash - School closed due to Snow, important information that should appear on the front page to capture your attention.
In The News - A dynamic list of recent articles from the "News" section of the website.
This is a panel that will rotate information about current school fundraisers, like the 50/50, McDonalds & Wendy's night, Basket Bingo and the Tricky tray to keep the school community and the community at large informed about events in the community related to school fundraising.
Some daily inspirational sayings along with beautiful pictures
These are a snapshot of events that are in the near future, they are taken from the official school calendar
Google Ads. These ads are provided by google based on the content of the page you are viewing, most likely they will be related to what you are reading and may or may not interest you. They are here because they can generate revenue for the school without any cost to any of us. Advertisers buy ads from Google and pay based on "impressions" how many times they are viewed on a web page and "clicks" how many times people click them to get more information, it's basically the business model on how Google makes its billions. While it's tempting to want to click on them as often as possible to increase "potential" revenue, Google is more than capable of detecting such trends and will cancel our GoogleAds account, so please use it if you are interested only. Hopefully it will prove useful and profitable.
Our Mission Statement and contact information for the school
What else is new?
In two words a lot. Here is a partial list of other improvements, to find out everything just visit the site and explore http://www.icrsschool.com
- Search engine optimizations for better placement in Google, Yahoo and MSN Live search engines.
- Efficient, clean, fast loading design of web pages and content.
- A content management system (CMS) that will be usable by both the web "experts" and others at the school to create, edit and publish content to the website. The hope is to have both staff and students begin contributing, maintaining and growing their website.
- Google Applications for staff e-mail, calendaring and for our school calendar. This allows both Gmail and non Gmail users to subscribe to the school calendar (ICS or XML) from their own calendar software.
- All of our contact directories (Administration, Faculty & Parishes) are SPAM safe when it comes to e-mail disclosures. Email addresses are not displayed on the website but are available to users. Other e-mails found in articles are protected from SPAM bots also.
- A principals BLOG "Principals Office" so Mr. Carr can keep the community updated.
- Ability to receive website content via RSS feeds.
- Very nice web based photo albums of our kids in school activities.
Is it done yet?
A website is never done; it is a constantly evolving and living entity. We have migrated over the most important information needed from the old website and will continue to do so along with adding new features and abilities not previously there. The community is the most important part of the process; we welcome your ideas and comments. Everything will be considered but not everything can be done, so just because you don't see your idea appear immediately it doesn't mean it wasn't good or even possible, it may be in the works as part of something bigger not yet revealed.
Parting Thoughts
I hope everyone likes what has been done so far and the effort required getting to this point. I'm looking forward to continued work and great things in school and on the website this year and for years to come. I can always use help and particularly if you have an ability in graphic arts or publishing. I am a software engineer we make things work but not necessarily pretty, I'll be the first to admit color and graphics are not my forte. I'd love to collaborate with any of you with those abilities to improve and add some flash to the website to make it an even more attractive and engaging experience.
A real nice graphic logo that represents the school would be a great place to start.
If you have story ideas or pictures from a school event please send them to our editor's e-mail account This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
