[ubuntu-uk] School websites

[Paul Sutton]

On 11/06/11 11:01, Sean Miller wrote:
> I think schools have a lot to answer for... they're supposed to be
> educational establishments, yet they seem to fundamentally misunderstand
> the whole concept of the web...
> 
> PDFs are fine, for documents that need to be printed consistently (eg.
> posters for school events) but ALL other information (where possible)
> should be in plain HTML, marked up in such a way as to be accessible to
> those on devices from the latest phones to the most basic 800x600 PC...
> 
> Why should I have to load up a PDF reader to find term times?  To find
> information on some school trip?   To get the contact information for
> the staff?  Even worse if it's Word or Excel, but PDF is bad enough.
> 
> I would like to think that schools "flew the flag" for accessibile web
> content etc. yet it seems that they are well behind the times.... or
> could it be they're just too lazy?
> 
> Sean
> 

Perhaps we need more people in schools to help out who can actually do
web design and help out without charging hundreds of pounds for the job.
nProblem is most people out of college may not have these skills, I have
seen web design courses advertised at my local college, they use
Dreamweaver,  great so i use that at college go in to schools and they
can't afford it.  Goes back to teaching skills rather than packages and
to the test.

Sometimes if you are the one person in the school who knows xyz then you
get the ict co-ordinator job,  so this comes part of the package,  so
you just struggle with what ever software is available in the time (or
lack of time) allocated in between planning, marking, teaching and all
the other jobs.

Seems to me that schools need help and perhaps we techie people need to
be more willing to work / volunteer / offer our time / expertise to
schools.

Paul

-- 

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