District Administration - December 2008 - (Page 64)

How Well Does This Web Site LEARN WHAT OUR WEB ANALYST SAYS IS RIGHT AND WRONG WITH THIS DISTRICT SITE Orange County (Fla.) Public Schools www.ocps.net THE ORANGE COUNTY FLA.) Public School District is located in central Florida. It serves over 178,000 students and has approximately 21,500 employees. OCPS boasts 126 “high-performing schools.” Design e design and layout of this site is polished and very impressive. e home page has a wealth of content that is extremely well-organized and well-compartmentalized. Among its highlights are a rotating slide show with color photographs featuring the latest OCPS news, a clickable district calendar, and sections for “Important Information,” “Quick Links,” “Videos on Demand” and “Upcoming Events.” Not all of the individual schools have a Web site (although the majority of them appear to). Each school site has its own look and feel and content selection. e district logo, which appears at the top left of all main district site pages, provides a link back to the home page, along with a consistent “Home” link. Navigation e top navigation bar on the home page (with links to sections for students, parents, community and employees) shrinks down and becomes part of the consistent left-hand navigation panel on all subsequent site pages. is left navigation panel oﬀers links related to the speciﬁc content in a given section (for example, in the “Community” area, the left-hand links include “Community Involvement,” “Facilities,” “Legislative Information,” “OCPS Newsroom” and more. Contributing to smooth travels throughout the site is a handy breadcrumb trail (clickable 64 December 2008 By Laura R. Bona The home page has a wealth of content that is extremely well-organized and well-compartmentalized. Among its highlights are a rotating slide show with color photographs featuring the latest OCPS news, a clickable district calendar, and sections for ”Important Information,” “Quick Links,” “Videos on Demand” and “Upcoming Events.” links that list the path taken to a particular page) atop all of the site’s pages. e search box is optimally placed at the far right of the top navigation bar. A large choice of options for very speciﬁc advanced searches (for example, to include only exact phrases or to ﬁnd content by date, type and many other helpful criteria) is oﬀered once an initial search term is entered. Overall, the search function provided sensible and extensive results. ere was, however, a quirk or two. A simple search for “student safety” did not, for some reason, deliver a link to the landing page in the “Students” section labeled “Student Safety” in the left-hand navigation panel there. Also, some of the page and section descriptions were vague or missing completely. ere is a site map, oﬀering another mode of browsing assistance; however, the only apparent way to ﬁnd it was to do a search for it. Usability ere is abundant and detailed information provided about the school district, the school board and the myriad departments within OCPS. e convenient directory of departments is an alphabetical listing that includes phone numbers as well as links to department site pages. e District Administration http://www.ocps.net

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - December 2008

District Administration - December 2008
Contents
Editor’s Letter
News Update
College Preparatory
Security
Technology
District Profile
Administrator Profile
DA Web Seminars
Desperately Seeking Special Ed Teachers
Special Education’s Challenges
Building the Best Auditorium
Leading the Way
Righting the Writing Process
Sharpening a District’s Leadership Model
TCEA
How Well Does This Web Site Work?
New Products
Problem Solution
Professional Opinion
Research Center
Calendar of Events
Online Edge

District Administration - December 2008