WEB WORKSHOP

As part of the Voices project the online team at BBC Gloucestershire are supporting Central Technology College’s plan to design a new school website.

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Voices: What it's all about Voices: Launch Day Community Toolkit: the essential guide to launching and running a successful community project

A group of pupils are working on ideas for the site as part of an IT project.

BBC Gloucestershire's Mez Packer and Clare Parrack went along to hold two web workshop sessions with some of the students to advise on design and content, but most importantly to find out what THEY wanted to see on their school website.

We started by asking the boys about their favourite places on the internet. These were mainly sports, gaming and music sites, so it was obvious that a fun element should be a feature of the pupils’ section of the site.

Suggested titles for this section from staff jokingly include ‘Boy Zone’ or ‘Waste-o-Space’ but the pupils are confident they can come up with a cooler name!

Boys meet girlie: a look at the Barbie website made up minds about how the school site WON'T look!

But a school website is not just for the students themselves. A brainstorming session came up with loads of ideas on different audiences and what they would want from the site. These were:

• Students: school timetable, information on all curriculum subjects including links to useful external sites for homework help in each subject, teacher profiles (particularly for new members of staff), facility to send in homework via email, messageboard, showcase for arts, music and other projects in picture galleries and audio-visual presentations, and fun stuff too as well as the chance to share their passions outside school – whether for hobbies, sports, or even just favourite jokes – by writing about them.
  
  
• Parents: school holiday dates, newsletter, and (for parents of prospective pupils) general information about the school - maybe even a virtual tour which could be designed by pupils as a multi-media project.
  
  
• Staff: showcase for pupils’ work, features on school productions, trips and outings – in short an online brochure advertising the school.
  
  
• Ex-pupils: messageboard, news about reunions, features
  about former pupils who are doing interesting things, careers advice and support.

Clare Parrack and Mez Packer at the web workshop

This session helped to crystallise ideas about site structure and navigation, while a discussion about colour and design (illustrated by looking at websites aimed at different audiences and markets) quickly established that Barbie pink and flowery type would not present the right image for a boys’ school!

The boys at CTC thought the site should incorporate both the college colours (dark blue and yellow) and the school badge.

>>See the page of design tips and useful links we used for our web workshop

At the end of the teach-in we set the boys some homework, too! They were each challenged to write a story for the Voices section of the BBC website for Gloucestershire about something they are passionate about, whether it’s a hobby or an issue affecting themselves, their friends or family.

We’ll be sharing those stories here in the weeks and months to come.

If YOU live near Central Technology College or Barnwood Park School and want to contribute to our Voices of Gloucester pages - by telling us about a local activity you want to highlight or something you'd like to change or improve, please get in touch by using the form below.