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California Educational Data Processing Association |
The DataBus - Vol. 37, No. 5
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The theme of the SIG meeting in Yolo county was "Developing and Maintaining Websites." The meeting started with a demonstration by Bill Schaible of Microsoft's FrontPage97 web development tool. We discussed and demonstrated features of this tool and compared them with other products such as QuickSite, Hot Dog, NetObjects Fusion 2 and Adobe Sight Mill. FrontPage97 is much improved over the previous version of the product and a number of the CEDPA members present indicated they will be giving it a try. Ease of use combined with the power to create complex web sites makes FontPage97 look as if it will be hard to beat.
We had a very interesting discussion of who is responsible for creating and maintaining the web sites at each of our district or county offices. Most websites started with someone in the technical group getting it up and going but what happened next was an interesting topic of discussion. We discussed that the web pages that are being created are definitely a form of publishing and that we could draw a lot of comparisons between publishing on the web and publishing school newspapers and/or other district or county publications. Some districts are expanding their web duties to each department and school, each with its own editor. The editors may also be the technicians that develop and maintain the web pages but more frequently are not the persons who do the actual development. Districts that are trying to develop rules and regulations for publishing on the web may be able to save some time by reviewing their board policies relating to school newspapers and/or other publishing polices since web pages are just a new form of publishing. Most rules and regulations previously passed by our boards regarding publishing will apply.
The next SIG meeting will be at the October CEDPA conference in Sacramento. See you there.
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