We've made the decision to move the school's website to schools-online. There were other options but they all involved me being too involved which, although it was never directly stated, was the main reason for change.
I agree, the bus-count is one. [The number of people who have to be run over by a bus for things to fail utterly.]
Still I'm conflicted. Over the years the website has moved from being a rag tag collection of pages to something that was central to the school's life—for example we used to produce, at great cost in money and effort a paper newsletter, now we use the website. And as at present everything had to go through me I was becoming a choke point.
That is the great advantage of schools online, I can do the initial set up, June can manage the accounts and the staff can create the content.
My issues?
- The thing is ugly. Ugly in the aesthetic sense and ugly in the coding sense
- Because I had complete control various styles were consistently reproduced
- Because I had complete control various idiocies were not perpetrated
Actually it's probably nostalgia that is my big problem, I built something good; I grew something that changed the way that we do things as a school. And I think that I built well.
For example my wife recently got a mobile phone with an internet connection that was worth using, so I checked out the school site, it linearized perfectly [well almost]. Six years ago I designed a responsive web site!
Building that web site was the main reason that I took to the OU road, I love that site and I'm incredibly precious about it. It is time to give it up but...
I hate the idea that we are going to get an off-the-shelf solution simply because we cannot justify spending time and money on building something special. Boroughmuir is a great school; average, run-of-the-mill, these aren't our values.
The web site isn't the school and we can't divert resources from our core business of teaching kids, that I understand. And what we've plumped for will fufill the basic spec. Maybe I'm wrong but to me it feels like we've choosen the easy option.
Judge for yourselves here is my site, and here is a schools-online site.
Comments
New comment
I think that sometimes you need to just let go. If you're no longer the gatekeeper, then if/when asked to do something just step back.
Off-the-peg is never going to be as good as custom-built, but it will force the others to do things for themselves. Like I say, never do for your child what your child can do for themselves - only 'child' in this sense is the rest of the staff!
New comment
Right decision, wrong feeling, life...
You're right Bren, I'm right, still it all feels wrong.
arb nellie