I've noticed a number of sites where students or other community participation is obvious. Are your students involved? How do you get them involved? How do you manage student publishing. How do you keep your webmaster from burning out?

-- Terry Kearns (gradyproject@aol.com), April 07, 2001

Answers

I'm one of two webmasters at my school in Salem, Oregon. Our school 
doesn't have a big problem with burnout because we cycle webmasters 
every year or two (I'm on my second year), with a year of training 
before taking over. Our web system is almost completely student run, 
except for district related administrative decisions. Tom and I have 
rebuilt the server (hardware and software) to our liking and have 
trained two new webmasters to take over when we graduate this year.


Our school also has a few web programming related classes. More 
information can be found at our website sprague.salkeiz.k12.or.us or 
our teacher's website, www.online2.org. In the "WWW Design" 
and "Computer Management and Careers" courses, students produce 
personal web pages, which we host on our server. The rest of the site 
is designed and maintained by our tech support crew (approx. 15 
students) who are also responsible for making sure the computer labs 
are functioning properly as well as the teachers' classroom 
workstations.


We don’t have a large problem with content either. Most of our pages 
are constantly being viewed, either by parents or other members of 
the community, who keep us informed if something appears to be out of 
line.



I hope this helps.

Kevin Zanella,
Sprague High School

-- Kevin Zanella (jouledax@home.com), April 08, 2001.

Last year I started a Web Mastering class at Eisenhower High School in 
Houston, Texas, and now this year I teach this subject all day long. 
My thought is to have my students update the school web site at 
http://www.aldine.k12.tx.us/schools/ike/index.html twice a year. 


We are on modified block scheduling so I get a whole new batch of 
students after Christmas. Right now my 75 spring session students are 
working on a complete redo of that site. Our class site is at 
http://www.crpc.rice.edu/CRPC/GT/bchristo/webmastering/ if you would 
like to see what our curriculum is. 


I would be interested in hearing from teachers that maintain the 
school site from within their Web Mastering classes. It's turning out 
to be quite a challenge to coordinate 75 in-progress pages as well as 
teach new skills as we go. I don't want us to just be a factory, I 
want my students to constantly learn new web mastering software, 
techniques, and graphic design principles. Any advice would be 
appreciated!

-- Barbara Christopher (bchristo@cs.rice.edu), April 08, 2001.

In our school we started small and are working our way up. Our first year the web page for our high school began as a PTSO project that my wife volunteered me for. I worked with an Asst. Principal at our school and he found 2 freshmen to volunteer during the first year. Since they weren't receiving any academic credit they eventually had to concentrate on real classes. This current school year, we are trialing a web class with 4 sophomores that includes the 2 original students. Since I'm not a certified teacher but they are in a class or a "sub-class" of a technology teacher but I work with them. I have set up the overall course outline and had it approved by the administration. After some initial research into a variety of site and tools, we finally turned them loose on the site. It has been redesigned with each student now responsible for a section. All work must go through me to get published though. That way I can check it, edit it and then publish it. I wasn't real popular at first with this policy but they have come to deal with it.

Since our site has been expanding this year to include all clubs and organizations, all sports and all faculty work, we usually have enough projects lined up to keep the students busy.

We are hoping that after this "trial" year, that a certified teacher will pick up the class so that it is a full time project for the school.

-- Bill Elder (btelder@yahoo.com), April 08, 2001.

I am the WebMaster for my High School- Wausau West High School in Wausau, Wisconsin. This is my first year as WebMaster so I am learning a lot. I have been teaching how to make Web pages using HTML for a couple of years. I also teach javascript to make the pages more dynamic. I have volunteer students who work for me on our web site. This is counted as a class for me and the students get a quarter credit per semester for it. Our Web site has been done totally by students. During the summer months a student is hired to work on the web site updating it so that it is current as soon as school starts. I oversee the Web Designers work before I upload it to our Web Server. Most of my Web Designers have taken Adobe PhotoShop and make a lot of their own backgrounds and headings. It is really an exciting job that I have to oversee all of this. It never ceases to amaze me what these really creative students come up with. It is a challenge and fantastic learning experience to work with this.

Our website address is http://www.wausau.k12.wi.us/west

-- Donna Kitchens (dkitchns@wausau.k12.wi.us), May 03, 2001.