Wikify Our Web Site?

Posted by: Richard
December262008

What if we applied wiki concepts to our public-facing web site? Could we harness power of the commons to build a better present ourselves to our core audiences? Considering that most of these audiences are people already in our school community, this idea could have potential.

There exist many intermediate steps between controlling all of the content ourselves and opening it up completely to the entire world.
  • Encourage faculty and staff members to manage site content (as we currently do).
  • Include parent and student contributions (as we currently do on our internal web site).
  • Allow any community member to edit a site page, but review the submission before publishing it.
  • Allow any community member to edit a site page and immediately publish it.
  • Allow any member of the public to edit site content.


Could we take a step or two toward a community-generated school web site?

Update 1/9/2008: Dearborn Public Schools (Michigan) has done it.

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Comments

Posted by Mark Ahlness on January 04 - 11:00:12

Richard, I would really, really encourage you to move your web site to a wiki. It's a long story, but my school just made the official change over a few months ago: http://arborheights.com will get you there. It was a wide open wiki for over two years. It eventually replaced one of the earliest school websites on the internet (links to old content are on the imagemap, bottom, of the wiki). Good luck - Mark

Posted by Richard on January 06 - 12:42:00

Thank you for sharing your site, Mark. it's great to hear that you have done this successfully. It's definitely worth consideration and even a try.

In a school with a Communications department, it's more challenging to make the leap, because we have paid staff members who work on crafting a readable, compelling message for our audiences. Commenting might be an intermediate step to encourage people to participate in crafting the content.

Have you succeeded in getting community members to participate in editing content on the main, descriptive pages about the school program?

Richard

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