Cluny Primary School

Address
Cluny Primary School Sauchen by Inverurie Aberdeenshire AB51 7JQ

Visit to our website here

Contact
Val Cooper 01330 833204 cluny.sch@aberdeenshire.gov.uk

July 05
Introduction
Cluny School is a rural, two teacher (at present) primary school near the village of Sauchen in Aberdeenshire. The role is growing due to house building in the area and there may be enough children to warrant an extra teacher for 2005/06 session. The teaching head is keen on using ICT to enhance learning and teaching and has purchased interactive whiteboards for both classes, has a well equipped computer suite and several Alphasmarts.

The initiative
I was keen to be involved in the project as I had never produced a website before and was aware it was a skill I needed to develop in my current secondment as ICT Project Officer. The Cluny head teacher was also very keen. She had never produced a website so, like me, was interested in participating because of the training and support being offered. However, because of time restraints, she would not have been so keen to do so without the support I could offer her.

Purpose
Parents had been requesting a school website be set up and the head teacher saw the advantages for prospective parents too. All felt it would help increase the already strong home/school links. All the school staff were consulted and gave their views and the pupils were very definite about what should and shouldn’t be on their website. The parents’ questionnaire given at the SSO planning meeting was adapted to suit the school and was completed and returned by 100% of the parents!

Planning
Who? The Head Teacher was keen that the whole school be involved in helping to produce the website. This is possible in a small school where it could not be considered in bigger schools. However, the initial construction was to be done by the Head and me, with some assistance from the children in P6 & 7 to collect the material and the administrative assistant to help with the typing or accessing electronic copies. Next term I will give the administrative assistant some training on editing so that she can add newsletters, change/add dates to the calendar, prospectus entries, etc. I will also show a classroom assistant how to edit the children’s pages so that she can help the children change or add to the work on display. I hope that the maintenance of the site could be handed over to the school completely by Christmas. However, I would still be on hand to help with any problems if required.

What? I spent a lot of time looking at other websites, both the ones already produced by authority schools and those suggested on the SSO training. The authority ones were interesting as it became clear to me that there was, as yet, no authority policy on what should be on a school website. After discussion with the head it was clear she wanted something fairly basic. I suggested that she look at some sites and the one she liked best was the one for Maud School, http://www.maud.aberdeenshire.sch.uk/ , so this was our target.

Much of the content for the website was information from the school prospectus and, as this was already available electronically, speeded up the production. I spent two afternoons working with the P6 & 7 children getting them to help produce some other content, e.g. sound files, photos, video, drawings and writing.

Security issues were considered at each stage. All schools already require parental permission for photographs of children to be taken but this does not specifically include website use. When queried about this, the (now retired) director said he thought that this permission would be enough. Cluny School, staff and pupils, decided that they would be more cautious and not use photos of any children or adults. A school acceptable website use policy is needed for authority schools. One school has produced a draft version that may be adapted for use by any authority school. Suggested website content for authority schools also needs to be produced.

Tools required to produce the website were all readily available to us. However, other schools may not be so lucky. Most do now have digital cameras and scanners. There were no costs involved in producing the website.

When? As I am lucky enough to be on a two year secondment, finding time to complete this project was not an issue though it did have to compete with other tasks! It was harder finding time to liaise with the teaching head especially as we got nearer the end of term. I have set aside some time next term for training the school staff in maintaining the site and hope to hand this over to the school completely by Christmas.

iPOD
The children are very proud of their school and wanted to tell the world about it. I thought that recording them speaking about their school would have greater impact than just writing about it. This was where the iPod was so convenient. Rather than have to set up a computer with a microphone it was so easy just to plug in the recording device to the iPod and let them talk. It was very easy to download the sound files and the quality was better than with conventional mics available in schools. It was also easy to do the recording anywhere without being constrained by plugs, leads and computers. Though we did not have time to do so before the end of term, we intend recording the children singing the school song and playing instruments to add to the site at a later date.

The initial problem of giving it time to power up before starting recording meant that the sound files had to be cropped. Once shown how, (thanks Margret!) this was easy to do using Sound Recorder.

Producing & Publishing
The training was a bit scary! I came away totally confused rather than reassured. Lack of time to try out the software was the main problem. Returning to base and a few hours spent familiarising myself with the software and the problems of positioning the graphics on the page and making them the correct size resulted in reasonable progress. Remembering to always remove the pictures before making changes to them took a while and caused some frustration at first. The time required to ‘Save and View’ each change to see the effect was a bit annoying especially if it involved a lot of scrolling up and down the page and it meant that I didn’t want to spend a great deal of time working on the site at a time. I still need to sort out some issues e.g. how to link pictures to sound files, how to add videos and how to space out 2 columns when you have a subheading in one and not the other.

Centring pictures on the page was a bit hit or miss but then I started using a widescreen laptop and the positions seemed to change again! The school picture on the home page is no longer under the title.

The pages with links were easy to do but I wasn’t so keen on the positioning. I would have liked to have been able to add columns as in the flexible grid and so have 3 columns to avoid having wasted space on the right and having to scroll a long way to get to the bottom of the list.

Finally a visitor counter number was added to the home page. It currently stands at over 70. Though many of these visits are probably me I certainly haven’t been on the site more than 70 times since we went on holiday!

Promoting
Current parents will be informed of the website’s existence at the start of next term. Meanwhile prospective parents and others interested can access the site through the link on Aberdeenshire’s WiredShire site, http://www.wiredshire.org.uk/classroom/3-14/websites/Default.asp and, hopefully, through the Scottish Schools Online on LT Scotland’s site.

Conclusion
After some initial familiarisation time with the software most of the tasks became fairly straightforward. Editing also became easy as a lot of practice was needed at this. The appearance of the finished website was pleasing as it took all the hard work out of designing layout but on the other hand there was little opportunity for being more creative or for laying out pages differently. Positioning pictures remains the thing I found hardest and in some cases am still not very happy with the end results. Overall, take2theweb is easy software to use and the end results look more professional than many others. Schools could easily make use of it to produce and maintain a website.

Strategic overview and beyond
Over the coming years I would like to see the website becoming more of a showcase for children’s work. As the head teacher becomes more familiar with editing the content then I’m sure the children will be encouraged to add more of their own work. I would like to see the school set up a webteam to maintain the site. I would envisage this as being mainly children but with help from the classroom assistant and administrative assistant and overseen by the head.

Making more use of the iPod to add music, written and played by the children, would add another dimension to the site. Lack of time before the holidays meant this was not done initially. As we have been experimenting with digital video, the children would like to be able to put some of that on their website too. So far I have not been able to do this.

As the parents were enthusiastic about setting up a school website it would be interesting to get their feedback on the content and layout. When I compared the website content with the responses from the parents’ questionnaire I found that we had included the most popular requests. Next session I intend designing a questionnaire to get their views on the website and would also like to adapt it for staff and pupils too. These responses would then inform how the website will develop.

Alison Butcher, ICT Project Officer