top of page

Personal Branding for your School

A simple comic by XKCD shows a Venn diagram with “Things on the front page of a university website”. “Things people go to the site looking for,” and finally the overlap “Full name of school.”

Though the comic is meant to be humourous, it definitely has a ring of truth to it. School website designers need to take considerations for their staff, administration, county/ city/ provincial government, student, and prospective student/parent needs. It’s important that no one agenda takes precedent over others; in fact, the main agenda we should focus on is what the user/customer wants and needs. In fact, the best websites are sleek, well-organized, and simple.

Do we want our website to combine with our CMS (course management system), a campus portal for students and staff, and/or email integration? What is the simplest format that will give us the most benefits? How can we simplify and streamline what we want to say to parallel what parents want to hear? What can we do to give the most appropriate and accurate information to visitors while also making them want to stay and learn more about our school?

I really love the style and feel of Clark County School District’s site. It looks quite clean and has links on the front page to issues the district finds important, but also has a simple navigational bar filled with information hidden until you scroll over the subject heading. I also like how they branded their CMS as “Infinite

Campus,” which is not only catchy but is also something that sounds technologically advanced. I think it’s important, as well, to get student involvement in the creation of the web page. They are their school’s biggest supporters and best advertisers. If they are proud of their contributions to the website, they will spread the word and more family and friends will visit. There should also be a school website task force to insure all links work, information is correct and up-to-date, and the information available is proofread.

At our school, confidentiality is key. We send home “right to photograph” permission slips so teachers are allowed to photograph students and post them to our private folders in Google Drive. We only use GAFE so everything is secure and only available to those registered with our school. For pictures of students on our public website, we get parents and students involved in the selection of photographs and further permissions must be granted by both parent(s) and child(ren).

Some guideline recommendations:

  • Pages updated monthly and run by group input. My school’s newsletters are written on google drive as a collaboration between all grade teachers. This can also be done for webpages. Each page run by a grade and teachers can decide when and how to update, but at least once a month.

  • Front page of website should emulate some of the 25 best k-12/school district sites, specifically Vali Mountain School, The First Academy, and Clark County School District’s site. Simplicity is key.

  • If a graphic artist can be hired, sites like Highlands Primary School or Peartree Primary School should be considered, especially in an elementary or kindergarten setting

  • In either case, a professional graphic artist needs to be consulted for logo design.

  • Free resources should be explored first. Sites like Weebly for Education, Wix, Wordpress.org, Edublogs

  • Of course, if you are a GAFE school, Google sites or even Google Classroom should be considered as it offers more protection to students; however, it does not offer the flexibility of other platforms

  • In any case, the website must be compatible with mobile technology and offer a mobile site

Avoidable pitfalls:

  • Messy and overcrowded sites

  • Use of colour – colour is a powerful tool and needs to be given a lot of thought. It conveys emotion, professionalism or playfulness, modern or traditional, etc., and colour can really make or break a website.

  • Trying to reinvent layouts to fit our needs – find a layout that mostly works and stick with it!

  • Fonts that are silly, childish, or difficult to read. It’s a school website, but it still needs to be professional.

  • Unusable or unfindable search bar – people want to search and it’s best to let the experts at google handle that

References

Healy, G. (2011, February 2). 5 Pitfalls to Avoid for New Web Designers. Retrieved June 06, 2016, from http://webdesign.tutsplus.com/articles/5-pitfalls-to-avoid-for-new-web-designers--webdesign-1888

Owoh, B. (2010). 11 Common Web Design Mistakes (Blunders). Retrieved June 06, 2016, from http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/11-common-mistakes-blunders-in-web-design/

Stribley, M. (2016, January 26). Website Color Schemes: The Palettes of 50 Visually Impactful Websites to Inspire You. Retrieved June 06, 2016, from https://designschool.canva.com/blog/website-color-schemes/


Featued Posts 
Recent Posts 
My Favotite EdTech Blogs
Search By Tags
No tags yet.
bottom of page