Web Master Dearborn Schools

Still recovering from a horrible week. From server issues to locking keys in the car while at dearborn high, I was getting hit from all angles. I felt like many in this video…

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If you have seen our district homepage, you should have noticed the News Ticker in the upper right of the page. This news ticker uses ajax to read an RSS feed and then display it in the page. This is really cool because we can take any Blog feed and run it through our website.

Don’t believe me? Check out our Lunch Menu Page.

http://dearbornschools.org/lunch/index.htm

On this page we pull in a feed from a recipe website! So when you check to see what your children are going to eat for lunch, you can also take a look at the scrolling recipes for dinner ideas!

This is very cool. How many websites do you know of that have RSS feeds? The vast majority of the big ones do: CNN, news sites, technology sites, YouTube, MySPace, Google, Yahoo, MSN, they all use RSS for a portion of their website. Even michigan.gov has a few RSS feeds. We can bring these into our district website dynamically.

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Have you been watching NBC?  I love the show “Office” and after every show they promote their website as a place to go and interact with the cast members or upload photos, watch deleted scenes, etc etc.

It is  a VERY Cool concept.  They have made it possible to extend the 30 minute show into an online journey to try and draw you into the show on a deeper level where you can read character blogs, videos, etc., and even interact with fellow viewers.  It is a great hook for someone who is really into a show.

Maybe we could do something similar on our DPS Cable TV channel and possibly use a Blog on the web.

Chris

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I came across a really cool website the other day:

http://www.getdemocracy.com

It is a complete video platform. I am trying to explore this as an option for our teachers to easily create a podcast or video to share. I don’t know all the specifics yet, but it appears to require a video plugin because it has it’s own codec. A big plus is the ability to run it on your own server with teachers using the client.

It seems to have potential but also seems to overlap with what iTunes already does very well with podcasting and organizing web multimedia.

-Chris

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Our website has a lot of interactive elements: eNews, Forums, Podcasts, PTSA website, blogs, moodle, social bookmarking, etc. All of these programs require 2 way input in order to be interactive which becomes a management issue. It is one thing to maintain a web program and quite another to have to feed it information all the time!

So this is my latest issue I am having. We have a lot of great programs and tools on our website, but when do you reach that saturation point? It is hard to keep webpages updated, programs running, and then have to feed information into interactive elements of the website to communicate with parents and the community. Just this year we launched 5 new pieces to our website: iLearn, iBlog, iSeek, eNews, and Parent Forums. This is on top of the podcasting of Board Meetings, Streaming Video of our District Cable Channel, and maintaining/adding information to the district website.

Somehow it is all getting done.  In the pursuit to be cutting-edge and interactive with the community, I am finding myself spending a lot of time feeding the www machine!
One day at a time and it all gets done!!!

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