Introduction to SharePoint – Part 4

I never thought I would write this article, it’s contrary to what we’ve been recommending for over 10 years. But after a recent experience attempting to train staff members to use the Joomla Content Management System (CMS), I have come to appreciate how difficult it can be to manage content on your website – even using a Content Management System.

There are cases when required changes to content on your public facing website are insufficient to justify the complexity associated with a full blown CMS system. If your website is less content centric, then SharePoint might work just fine.

One of our core philosophies is that it always takes more resources, in terms of time (if self-managed) or money (if outsourced), to manage content on your public facing website than it does to build it in the first place. This is almost universally true. And while managing your own website content sounds like a great idea, it needs more planning than an afterthought.

You must be very purposeful in your website design because managing your own content needs to be really simple if you expect your staff to do it. And I mean REALLY easy. What may seem a simple process for a technically inclined individual is not necessarily easy for the typical administrative assistant or teacher.

SharePoint brings the familiarity of Microsoft Office Professional (mostly Word) into the content management arena of your public facing website. If you can create a Word document, then with just a little introduction you will be able to create and modify web pages in your public facing website.

So why would you want to do this? Good question…

It boils down to three things:

1. Cost
2. Timeliness
3. Appearance

It’s interesting that these reasons mirror the frustrations we hear about when discussing a schools experience managing their website. It costs too much to change content, it takes too long to do so, and the appearance is often inconsistent or outdated.

You can spend a small fortune on hiring a graphic design team, implementing that design into web pages, and then making all the moving pieces work together. And that may be an important part of your overall marketing strategy. Or you can use a free website package that comes with your $4.95 per month hosting package and creates your website automatically by using one of a few selected templates. Both options, while at opposite ends of the spectrum are viable; but you might consider a more balanced approach.

By using SharePoint, a core component of Office 365 for Education you can have a professional looking website that also functions well. Setting up your website is quite simple and there is no cost associated with hosting your website – it’s part of the package offered free for Education.

In fairness, don’t plan to get by without spending some resources for your website – otherwise it will look like a free website. Rather, spend a modest amount to have a professionally designed logo and decide upon a color scheme, and then get some guidance on the layout. You’ll also need some initial help in setting up the basic pages. Once these preliminaries are accomplished, the rest is honestly very easy to do.

Let’s review each proposed advantage and see if you don’t agree:

Cost

When evaluating costs for your website, be sure to calculate total cost which include your domain name, hosting, graphic design, site construction, and the biggest of all – content management going forward.

The most common mistake is to assume that the largest cost component of your website is building it in the first place, this is rarely the case. While graphic design, site layout, and site construction can be costly, they determine the process by which you either begin to save money (self-management capabilities) or by which you are locked in to spending money (professional management).

You may be fine about having your website professionally managed. But don’t make the mistake of assuming it will manage itself or that you can easily manage it internally if you provide no blueprints to your website design team. You must determine, in advance, the correct technology upon which your website is constructed in order to enable self-management.

SharePoint saves you money by providing an unparalleled hosting platform (at no cost for education) and a robust set of tools to layout your website in an attractive manner utilizing your design elements and color scheme. Then it provides a WYSIWYG ribbon, similar to all Microsoft Office programs to add and manage text, images, links, forms, and other widgets (also called add-ins or plug-ins).

Let me emphasize the concept I opened with. We have recommended Joomla for over a decade as the Website Content Management System of choice for Charter School. The variety of features (widgets, plug ins, add-ins, extensions, etc.) is unparalleled, and far exceeds SharePoint. But, if you have a simple website design in mind, don’t update your website multiple times each day, and don’t have special functional requirements (ie. dual language, newsletters, etc.) then SharePoint will be perfectly adequate.

Timeliness

It is said that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. While true, the distance between points is equally important as the route in most cases.

The quickest way to update your website is to enable those who create content in your organization to publish that content on your website. This is both the straight path and short distance you want. I have never understood why a school would tolerate waiting days or weeks to have a paragraph or two changed on their website. This is as nonsensical as it is inefficient.

Appearance

The moniker of “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” applies to your website. Ask a dozen individuals from your school about your website appearance and you will get a dozen different responses.

So what really constitutes an attractive looking website? This is the Holy Grail of site designers around the world. It is a question that I cannot answer, only one that your school – through whatever process – must answer. And I have seen this literally take a year to do!

From a non-design perspective, all I can suggest is that a consistent display of page sizes, fonts, color schemes, and layout add to the overall appearance of your site.  Well sized and place imagery, logos, and other design elements are also important.

SharePoint does this far better than individually coded pages of html. It has only slightly less flexibility than Joomla to do this and allows non-programmers to pick a basic page layout, type in text and insert images, then publish a new web page that looks similar and complimentary to the rest of your site.

Summary

If your school has a very simple website, you may find that SharePoint (included in Office 365 for Education) is a perfect platform for your public facing website. It allows you to manage your website in a cost effective and timely manner that yields an attractive result.

If you are tired of paying significant fees and waiting too long for website content updates, consider changing your public facing website to SharePoint, part of your Office 365 for Education system.

Online Marketing Basics - Part 1 of 3

During the crucial planning year, you need to get your marketing game on. After all, the most important measure of your success is student enrollment. And unless you are deeply connected to your proposed student population through some other non-profit association or group, that means doing some good old fashioned marketing.

There are many ways to do marketing and I don’t pretend to be a marketing expertise. My experience with those who make such claims is not favorable.  However, when it comes to the basics of online marketing, or marketing driven primarily by the Internet, there are some reasonably well established ways of doing this.

Let’s consider three areas you might want to review with respect to your Internet oriented marketing strategy, we’ll review one each week:

1. Your website as a marketing machine
2. Email marketing and online communications
3. Social media sanity

Your website as a marketing machine

 

The notion of a “well designed” website is a bit  subjective. It starts with artistic style, design elements, and color combinations created by an experienced design team. But it also assumes an underlying quality of hosting platforms, server technologies, and functionality. And it assumes dynamic and current information that is relevant to your potential site visitors.

 

There are several articles on this blog addressing website construction, but let’s set that completely aside and focus on your website purely from a marketing perspective.

 

From a marketing perspective your objective is pretty simple. Help potential students (or their parents),  find your school online, make it easy for them to engage, develop a relationship with them,  harvest or gather their contact information, and develop a process to follow up and answer their questions and guide them through enrollment. You will want to automate this process as much as possible to keep costs down.

 

Improving the ability for potential students to find your school on the Internet is often referred to as search optimization. Doing search optimization well is an ongoing challenge and consists of two general categories of activities – paid optimization (such as Pay Per Click advertising) and native or organic optimization. In my mind free is always better, but good optimization always comes at a cost. You either spend money for search optimization advertising, or you spend time placing high quality content on your website that produces high organic search results. In real life you will probably want to do both, this is particularly true for new schools.

 

One of the most frequently overlooked features that will improve organic search results is to place video on your home page. A recent study I found suggested a 1200% increase in search results by using this technique alone. In addition to that you will want to tag (label) or provide keywords called meta data on each page, use sufficient headers in your articles, label each and every image or video on your site with accurate and descriptive words,  and of course write useful content. All of these things will make it easy for search engines to properly index your site. Indexing is an ongoing process by which search engines crawl or evaluate your site and quantify relevance of your content, these measurements will determine your placement on their service.

 

There is an entire industry on the Internet, indeed an inexhaustible supply of individuals and groups who claim to have expertise in Search Engine Optimization. No doubt someone out there has to be an expert, but in every case (and we have tried more than a few) that we have hired these so called “SEO Experts”, they have collected a lot of money and without exception delivered little in the way of improved results.

 

Google and the other search engines closely guard the metrics associated with search optimization, in similar fashion Coca Cola closely guards the formulation of their products. And they (search engines) are continually changing the formula for search optimization to produce better results. Good quality content that is fresh and relevant and linked to other sites and networks will eventually produce good organic search results, in the interim you may want to do some search word advertising.

 

Want to take a simple test to see how well your school does in organic search? Just open a fresh browse and clear all of your cookies and cache, then type in a few key words that you would use to find your school (hint: don’t use your school name – that’s cheating and a prospective student would not know that information). Now count the pages of results and if you don’t appear on the first few pages, you have work to do.

 

Bottom line is that a free web site put up by one of your parent volunteers, while an admirable effort, may not garner the kind of organic search optimization you need. And with that quality of website construction, you may need to spend significantly to buy search optimization.  This of course, assumes the volunteer is not one of those hard to find SEO experts!

 

Measure your progress

 

Google analytics is no doubt the industry standard tool to measure your site traffic. But many website authoring frameworks provide their own measuring tools, often in the form of raw page counts. However you choose to measure your website traffic, do so regularly. Even with just basic page counts, you can quickly determine which content on your website provides the most interest for site visitors.

 

Don’t forget the mobile platform

 

The statistics associated with mobile devices as a share of Internet search makes a very compelling argument to optimize your website for mobile devices. Mobile access is the fastest growing segment of Internet traffic. Accordingly, it would be a very good idea to ensure that your website is mobile friendly.

 

There are several ways to do this and the techniques are outside the scope of this article, but a good start is to take a look at your website through your mobile phone or smart phone.  Then enlist your friends, with different brands of phones to do the same.  Taking a look at your site and attempting to navigate it will provide you a great deal of insight into what works and what does not.

 

The simplest way of managing the mobile access on your website is to use the right technology in the first place. Mature open source platforms, such as Word Press or Joomla do a very good job of mobile optimization right out of the box. “Build your own website” tools on many of the popular hosting companies may not do an adequate job.

 

If your budget allows, it is possible to place code on your website that senses a mobile device and redirects site visitors to a portion of your website that is designed specifically for mobile web browsers.

 

Summary

 

Your online marketing begins with a well designed and constructed website with fresh and relevant content, particularly video. Your website should be the communications hub, much like a bicycle wheel, that serves as the end point for all of your Internet communication. Invest the time and money necessary to develop the search results you need. This may include paid search word advertising, Facebook Ads, and other venues. And don’t forget the ever growing audience of mobile users.

Next week we will address email and other forms of communication that will improve your marketing reach.

New Math – How 75% = 90%, and why you should do this calculation

I have a confession to make. After 4 years of expounding the merits of the eRate program, I realized last week that my calculations were way off – well sort of.  In a recent teleconference with two new Charter School who are considering the merits of filing for Priority 2 services, the subject of discount rates came up. And my math was wrong – is yours?

The general criterion for eRate reimbursement is a measure of the free & reduced lunch population at a given school. Although this number can often be improved upon significantly, by doing household income surveys, many schools simply don’t bother.

The thinking, I presume, is that with reimbursement thresholds hovering around 90%, there is little chance of getting reimbursed for Priority 2 items – which typically include the big ticket expenditures for servers, network gear, and connectivity. Only problem is that 75% equals 90%, at least according to eRate!

Say what??? That was my reaction, too.

Yes indeed, that equation is actually correct! According to the USAC discount matrix, if 75% of your student population is economically disadvantaged (as evidenced by free and reduced lunch counts, or household surveys) then you are at a 90% discount rate!

If only my test scores in college worked on the same principal!

And consider one other interesting report. In 2010, there was no discount criteria applied to any Priority 2 services. Indeed, every school that properly filed for eRate reimbursement for FY2010-11 received that reimbursement, regardless of their discount rate.  Unconventional, yes;   possible again in this fiscally stimulated administration? Perhaps …

 Now were talking quantum physics, not just math!

So what does this have to do with your particular situation? Well, precisely nothing if you follow the normal mode of ignoring eRate reimbursement for your school.  Astonishing as this seems, that is exactly what many Charter Schools are doing – nothing.

If soomeone were to offer you a 40%-60% discount on groceries for the school cafeteria, by filing a few forms. You would surely jump at the chance. What is the logic that keeps you from doing the same for your technology expenses?

Let’s review a general list of services eligible for reimbursement:

Priority 1 Services: (always reimbursed without discount rate considerations)

•  Fiber optic internet connections
• Telephone, fax, cell phones, and other types of internet access (DSL, wireless, etc.)
• Website hosting
• Email services
• Installation and configuration of the above

Priority 2 Services: (reimbursed according to a discount rate threshold)

• Internal Connections – equipment used for transport of digital information (excluding endpoints)
• Network components – routers, firewalls, switches, decoders, hubs, etc.
• Servers – email servers or servers providing an eligible service
• Wiring – wire and cabling to connect your eligible services
• Wireless Access Points and controllers
• Basic maintenance for all the above

Both of the aforementioned schools were under the impression, that there was no point in filing for eRate – aside from the Priority 1 services that are reimbursed to all schools. It is worth noting that their perception was shaped in some measure at a state eRate training event. (And no I don’t suspect a conspiracy against charter schools.) Even more puzzling is the fact that both schools serve minority populations with normally high economic need!

 

So what have you got to lose? Well, possibly thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the unfortunate reality is, due to allocations across fiscal years and other moving measures at USAC, you will ultimately only know your eligibility by filing.

 

In these difficult financial times, it seems extraordinary that reimbursement for technology services would be so inadequately managed. No doubt that eRate is a complex, time sensitive, form intensive, and deadline driven process. But that is not an acceptable excuse.

 

Perhaps a dose of good old fashioned determination is in order. One of my favorite quotes is “That which we persist in doing becomes easier for us to do; not that the nature of the thing itself is changed, but that our power to do is increased. (Heber J. Grant) Can you really afford to not manage this opportunity?

 

But then that brings up another favorite subject – informal logic. Why go through the trouble of filing for eRate, if you can outsource it for less than the cost of the reimbursement you will receive? If you would like to have a conversation with an eRate expert, call us. And then we will refer you to an expert!

 

USAC rules prohibit service providers, which we are, from providing certain eRate functions to ensure a fair bidding process.  So I conclude with this disclaimer. The above information is intended to be general in nature and for educational purposes only. Please contact your certified (yes this is a professional designation) eRate Management Professional for information regarding your specific circumstances.

 

And you might want to do that sooner than later, the eRate filing window will close in a few short months!

 

For the official list of eligible services, go to http://www.usac.org/sl/applicants/beforeyoubegin/eligible-services-list.aspx

Tis the season to do eRate, File-a-li-la-la the forms today!

I love the Christmas season, now termed the Holiday season by those more politically correct. As a technology provider for schools, it marks the start of the annual gift giving season by the Universal Services Administrative Company for eligible technology hardware and services.

The gifts are in the form of reimbursements through the eRate program, and you might not be getting your fair share!

Like me, you may not generally favor government largesse; but  the eRate program is reasonably well run, self-funded, and designed to support the most financially disadvantaged student populations (among other institutions). Take a look at your last telephone bill – mobile or otherwise – and you will see a small fee titled Federal Universal Services Fee. That is the source of the funding – everybody pays a little.

Charter Schools, unfortunately are more likely to receive a proverbial “lump of coal” in their Christmas – woops – Holiday stockings, than traditional school's. The reason is simple, it takes a level of expertise and a significant investment of time to wade through the myriad of forms, compliances, and dates associated with the program. Many Charter Schools simply don’t have the resources to successfully do this.

What a shame!

In a nutshell, there are two broad categories of reimbursements you can receive; they are labeled in the eRate program as Priority 1 eligible services and Priority 2 eligible services. Priority 1 services consist primarily of Internet, Telephone, Email, and Website Hosting Services. Priority 2 services consist of hardware components and services used within you’re your building to connect, route, secure, and deliver technology to end users.
 
These expenses are reimbursed at a rate roughly equivalent to your free and reduced lunch count percentages. Priority 1 services are always eligible for reimbursement; Priority 2 services have discount level thresholds, technology plans, and additional requirements.

What is the easiest way to participate in this annual gift giving? It might not be as difficult as you would think.

Here are a few  things you can do to improve your chances of having a Happier eRate Holiday:

1. Identify state eRate consortiums and join them

Check with your state office of education to see if there is an eRate Consortium. If one exists, they will often handle your Priority 1 items.  In fact some states will give you a steal of a deal on broadband AND help you file the eRate forms to boot.
Give yourself plenty of time. These organizations can be quite bureaucratic and move at a snails pace, but the value proposition can be excellent.

2. Verify that your telecom provider has an eRate department

If your state does not offer broadband, your telephone company should have the resource to help you file for your eRate reimbursement. In fact, you might even find a provider that will only bill you for the unreimbursed costs of your telephone, internet, and fax lines. It is common to bundle internet service with your telephone, especially in rural areas.

Be careful, you still must comply with the eRate program for both priorities and you can easily run afoul of the rules when your telecom sales representative gets involved.

3. Don’t forget your email and webhosting costs

While normally not significant, email services and web hosting costs are always eligible for eRate reimbursement, regardless of your discount rate. If you are settling for a third rate website and the crappy email system that comes attached to it, do yourself a huge favor, upgrade your email and website system and get reimbursed for doing so. It makes the cost very reasonable, and you will likely get huge productivity improvements to boot!

4. Outsource the entire eRate filing process to a professional

The adage of “Penny wise, pound foolish” is my favorite description of those who elect not to choose door #4. In the decade of my involvement with Charter Schools, I have seen very large sums of money lost because school administrators thought they could do this on their own.

Freestanding and independent Charter Schools lack the economy of scale to compete on the eRate playing field. Traditional school districts often have full time staffers just for this purpose.
 
The most common mistake is to presume an incorrect discount rate (there are ways to improve it significantly rather than just counting free and reduced lunch percentages), then buy the prevailing wisdom that you do not qualify for the big ticket Priority 2 items. And the results are both predictable and deplorable. All it takes is a cursory search on the USAC website to demonstrate how poorly most charter schools fare in receiving Priority 2 reimbursements.

Did you know that in in 2010, every school at every discount rate received their Priority 2 funding!  There are multi-year adjustments to the funding pool, and even the most seasoned eRate professionals don’t really know where the exact cutoff will fall for Priority 2 funding.

Don't listen to the naysayers that Priority 2 funding is impossible to acheive. It's bad advice!

Summary

When you are faced with critical tasks that require a high degree of specialization, but for only small projects or periods of time, it is usually best to outsource the task. This is exactly our position about the design and engineering aspect of your technology infrastructure.  Likewise, eRate is a highly specialized process, which trained professionals can manage in a fraction of the time you would spend.

Don’t brush this matter off for another year! Locate an eRate consultant, one who is a Certified eRate Management Professional, and invest in their services. You do it for special ed, technology, finance, and many other tasks – why not for eRate.

‘Tis the season to do eRate, and have a much happier holiday… or Merry Christmas, as the case may be by getting your share of the eRate gift giving.  

Managing Website Content - good, better, best

Managing public website content in the dynamic environment of a charter school is enormously time consuming. If you think otherwise, then your school’s website is most likely out of date and in need of an overhaul. A quick poll of your site’s users will likely confirm this, and probably tell you more than you care to know. Even the best and most popular websites face constant scrutiny from one set of stakeholders or another—who each inevitably have website suggestions but often little understanding of the costs attached to those suggestions.

Because charter schools have so many requests for content updates, accompanied by all the usual interruptions and stretched staff assignments, this task can quickly get overwhelming.

The purpose of this article is to explore three methods that we have used to manage website content, each with varying degrees of success. Pros and cons exist with each method, but no solution at all will ultimately cost you much more in wasted administrative resources. In fact, your public facing website can actually reduce the amount of administrative effort required to run your school, but only if done thoughtfully and consistently.

Before we address the methods, let’s quickly review the basic categories, and samples of content, that you ought to be familiar with, as explained below:

• Contact and directory information that bypass admin resources to every extent practical. This category includes phone, fax, email (forms-based), maps, organizational charts, and department information.
• Notifications that are legally required in order to comply with board and other necessary public notices. These can include board minutes, policy manuals, student handbooks, and health notifications.
• News and activity information to inform the community about all school related activities, including academics, events, calendars, community engagement, fundraisers, school plays, projects, and field trips.
• Social media and buzz to generate excitement, awareness, and sense of community. This involves using platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and other media associated with the school’s hub of activity.

This list is intentionally given in order from the least to the most frequently updated category, and roughly parallels with semi-annual, monthly, weekly, or daily updates. And correspondingly, this list is given from most to the least restrictive category, with respect to content review and approval. Keep this in mind as we outline the methods of managing content, because different kinds of content require different publishing processes, and have different shelf lives.

One last thing before we discuss methods—all content should take the shortest path possible from the time of its creation to its publication. For example, if a calendar of events has three separate approval processes to go through, and faces any delays that sometimes happen in life, then you may as well forget about it. By the time the event is posted and published, it could long since be over. Another example is homework assignments or study guides submitted by teachers for the website. Systems need to be in place for allowing and training staff to easily save a document in a format they understand (Word, Excel, PDF, etc.) and then quickly publish the document to the website, without a lengthy approval process or any difficult technical steps.

Easier said than done? Perhaps. But with even modest training, any of these three methods below will provide this functionality. I’ve labeled them as Good, Better, and Best.

Good Use whatever they are comfortable with.

With so many web publishing options available, it is quite possible that members of your staff already have a blog, a personal home page, a Facebook page, or a website devoted to their work. These are often personalized very well, and reflect the passion and interest of the individual authors. Allowing this kind of content management comes at a very low initial cost, a reasonably high participation rate, and can be quite effective. We’ve seen some that are excellent, both artistically and functionally.

However, it’s important to understand the risks associated with this model. The primary risk is content control, lack of oversight, and possible legal issues. These kinds of resources are universally owned by the individuals creating them. Inappropriate use could be embarrassing to the school, provide misinformation, and potentially create liabilities that you feel are unacceptable. And without the cooperation of any of your particular staff members, an offensive website cannot easily be taken down, especially if you have adopted a precedent of allowing this kind of online creativity over a long period of time.

Artistically speaking, your website may end up looking like a virtual flea market. But the good thing is that there will be accurate content readily available.

Better Use a centralized content management system.

Most schools use this model to manage website content, and for good reason. Using a content management system is an efficient way to build a website that contains most of the features you need, with some type of password protected area that allows a management interface to add, remove, or modify content. Because most content management systems are built with a template framework, information on new pages gets formatted in a similar fashion as other pages, giving the site a more uniform feel. While this can make creating content easier, it can also create limitations in the design elements and artistic expressions you may wish to use.

With a modest amount of training, users can add, remove, and edit content in areas of the website where they have responsibility to do so. And some content management systems have thousands of appliciations or utilities that you can easily set up to do a wide range of tasks, like updating your Facebook page, sending out newsletters, or creating extensive directories.

Many charter schools have used such a method, normally powered by Joomla, an open source content management system. But while many of our schools use this model, we’ve experienced only modest success in those cases where there is not a single website content manger on site.

Simple means different things to different individuals, and some CMS interfaces can be difficult to use or require in-depth training for staff and faculty. As you have likely experienced, often any kind of barrier or perceived difficulty may pretty much stop users from updating content on the school website, simply because they are not motivated to do so. Functionally, you will have a uniform looking website, but the amount of fresh content will depend upon how motivated and reasonably trained users are. Note: This takes more than one individual to work successfully, unless that individual devotes significant time to content management.

BestMicrosoft Sharepoint: a public website that is connected to your internal documents.

Sharepoint is a very popular Microsoft technology that manages website content through a simple Internet Explorer interface. It’s based upon the permissions you as a user are granted on the site. It bridges the gap between whichever document is sitting on your desktop waiting to be shared and the ability to upload that document to your public facing website. In the simplest of terms, any staff member with permission to do so can create a document, save it to a specific folder on their desktop, and then synchronize it to the school’s public website.

Sharepoint provides a uniform and artistically appealing framework that easily synchronizes documents from desktops with the public facing website. By allowing the creators of your most frequently changed content to publish their materials directly to the website, you will ensure that your content is always up to date.

Admittedly, there are some underlying assumptions in this model, namely the required server and software infrastructure. But this infrastructure is not terribly expensive, especially when bundled with your annual school agreement license for Microsoft technologies. It is interesting to note that the Live@edu services I recently wrote about (which provides free email, document storage, and web pages for students) utilizes Sharepoint as a usable framework. Schools adopting the Live@edu services could more easily transition to the Sharepoint services for managing website content because of the initial familiarity with the technology and interface.

Summary

Managing content on your school website is a very large undertaking, and a process best accomplished by a method that delegates content creation to the responsible authors and where strict oversight is not required. Schools that can reduce the number of steps from content creation to online publication will have greater success in creating a dynamic public website.

And remember that content on the Internet is King! Even an imperfect looking website that has great resources—meaning fresh, accurate, relevant, and accessible content—will give you high marks when users to go answer the question, “How’s our school’s website?”

Finally, it is possible to use all three of the above models simultaneously to manage your website. You don't just have to use one model. Keeping all content resources within the framework of your site will give it a more uniform look.

Good, better, best,
Never let it rest;
Until your good is better,
And your better is your best.

Please let us know if you would like additional information about managing your website content more efficiently by using Sharepoint at your school.

Why you need an e-Rate consultant (and why it cannot be me)

Imagine receiving a coupon in the mail that was redeemable at any grocery store which offered you 70% off of all bread, milk, eggs and meat. Eligibility for the coupon was conditioned upon stating your house had a refrigerator to store the items and completing a few forms before your first shopping spree. In these resource constrained times, few of you would pass up such an opportunity!

Now imagine driving to the store intending to use your coupon to find that only bread and milk were available to you, because of your income. Imagine further that it would take you several hours if not days, to complete the forms required to redeem your coupon, and that the store providing the groceries was prohibited from talking to you about how the coupon worked or how to use it. Additionally, imagine being scheduled for training meetings to learn how to complete the forms which have very time sensitive windows for completion and a long list of approved uses for the discounted groceries. And finally imagine being required to plan your menu 3 – 5 years in advance for your most costly groceries, which of course had to be approved by a complete stranger.

Your coupon suddenly becomes not quite so appealing.  Yet giving up a 70% discount (or more) on items you use every day is very appealing, and for some, quite necessary! What do you do?

This is the “stranger than a reality show” world of e-Rate at a large majority of Charter Schools. Does this sound familiar? Here is the corollary:

• E-Rate is the coupon, USAC controls who gets them, and the relative prosperity of your student’s families is part of your eligibility
• CIPA (Child Internet Protection Act) compliance is your refrigerator, which you must have to even be considered for eligibility
• Your technology service provider is the grocery store who is prohibited from assisting you in obtaining your coupon
• The groceries for which you seek the coupon are your telephone, internet, email, website, and related technology equipment bills

So how do traditional school districts do this? It usually boils down to economy of scale (which most Charter Schools don’t have). Traditional districts are sufficiently large and the funds so significant, that they can afford to hire full-time e-Rate staffers.  Such is not the case with most freestanding Charter Schools.

Is it any wonder that the Charter School Community has difficulty obtaining their fair share of e-Rate funding? With few exceptions what I observe is a complete disaster; in one case the financial losses exceeded one hundred thousand dollars (yes that is six figures worth) in a single school year. And this even happened at a school where financial management was outsourced by supposed professionals, which is truly perplexing.

Here are the most common mistakes I observe regarding e-Rate:

• Attempting to do this without a significant investment in training and time. This is not a good second duty for a principal or math teacher.
• Assuming you are ineligible for reimbursement. Certain expenses are always eligible for reimbursement, regardless of your free and reduced lunch count.
• Failing to utilize a family survey to get a more accurate e-Rate discount. This is especially important where “free lunches” run counter to social norms..
• Structuring technology resources in manner that is ineligible for reimbursement or incorrectly classifying the expenses as priority two.
• Believing (erroneously) that the money is too insignificant to justify the effort 

For most charter schools, this is simply not a task that you should attempt on your own, unless you belong to a consortium of schools that can afford a full-time professional. If you doubt my advice, all that is needed to prove my point is a simple search at the official USAC website which maintains a complete database of e-Rate reimbursement. For example, in the State of Utah in FY 2010 fewer than a dozen charter schools received any e-Rate reimbursement that was not filed by an e-Rate professional.

In states that have a large population of freestanding Charter Schools, an e-Rate consortium is an excellent idea. It essentially brings the economies of scale to individual Charter Schools by filing e-Rate as a group. However, this requires a high degree of co-operation and may provide fewer benefits for some within the consortium than others. Getting independent and highly individualistic charter schools to co-operate seems to be a challenge.

For these reasons, we strongly encourage the use of e-Rate professionals, but it is important to do your homework when selecting an e-Rate professional. There are no formal credentials in the world of e-Rate consultants, although the e-Rate Management Professionals Association is attempting to change that. In our experience, fees range widely, as do the personal interaction with your staff. Some companies provide a mostly web-based do-it-yourself interface; others have a very personal and accountable approach. Our recommendation is Kellogg & Sovereign, LLC located in Ada, Oklahoma.

Now for the “not me” part of this article. By statute, technology service providers are restricted in many aspects of the e-Rate process, especially in the pre-bid time frame. This is to prevent undue influence and fraud associated with contracting procedures, and rightly so. E-Rate fraud has been problematic in the past, which is inexcusable, but understandable as the amount of money involved is significant.

So what’s the bottom line? Decide now to get some professional assistance for your e-Rate process. We are well into the FY 2012-13 e-Rate program year. In the worst case scenario you will be dollars ahead for telephone, fax, email, and web hosting costs each month; and in the best case scenario you will receive a huge discount on those expensive technology upgrades every few years.

In these resource constrained times, you simply cannot continue to ignore this important funding mechanism.

A model for your school website

Selecting the right web site technology for your school is an important undertaking. The expectation of being able to find things "on-line" is so pervasive now in our culture that not being able to do so is simply unacceptable. And with respect to a Charter School, it is essential to good governance and school administration.

Building a website is not that difficult anymore. There are many hosting companies that actually install website building software right into your hosting account. All you have to do is fill in a few blanks, check a few boxes, add a couple of pictures, and you have a website…. well sort of. What you end up with is a few pictures, a paragraph or two about your school, a contact us page, and maybe directions to your location.

Sadly, there are still administrators that believe this is adequate. And while I respect their opinions, my opinion is that is wholly inadequate, for a number of reasons I will discuss in this article.

Putting up a website that will serve your Charter School is important because it can actually reduce the cost of administration when designed correctly. In order for this to happen, your school website needs to be more than just a few pictures, a paragraph, a map, and a telephone number. A successful website implementation can save countless hours of phone calls, emails, sticky notes, and personal interruptions. And if I were the teacher, I would make every administrator write that last statement on the chalk board 50 times!

However, the fundamental challenge in deploying a useful website boils down to one simple problem…. Managing content! In every case, the addition, modification, and removal (archiving) of content on your website is always more difficult and time consuming than publishing it in the original instance. I cannot overstate the importance of understanding this principal.

You can manage your School Website without spending thousands of dollars for its construction or administration. Once setup, this can be done using Open Source (meaning free) software, an internet browser, and literally thousands of plug-ins (optional features) that are also free.

If you can type, create a digital image, or produce media such as video and music, you can create an impressive website that will serve your school in a multitude of ways.

Here is a list of the important content that should be on your school website and a few ideas of how it might work for you:

• Academic Information: Curriculum, homework, student resources, and classroom management information are specific to not only a given grade, but often a specific teacher within that grade. Each teacher can easily logon to a content driven site and upload her lesson plans, homework, suggested study materials (links), and other relevant information to help students succeed.
• Contact Information: School, administrators, staff, and support organizations all have contact requirements. These are often static (not changing) but can change if individuals leave, go on vacation, change roles, etc. And why would you fail to have a robust map on your website? This simple tool will help you avoid hours spent giving directions. While you are at it, ensure your site is mobile phone friendly for the growing number of users that rely on PDA or mobile browsers; they can look at your map while they are enroute.
• Legal Information: Disclosures, public hearing notifications, meeting and legal notes are often required by law. If it takes days or weeks to get a page added to your existing website, instead of a few minutes, you are not providing adequate notification to you community.
• News Information: Events, clubs, PTO, recognitions, school closings, calendars, etc. This list is almost endless, and the requirements are diverse and very time sensitive. Giving each organization their own "page" on the website and the authority to update it as often as possible will greatly improve the process of being involved by your volunteers.
• Policy Information: Enrollment, attendance, discipline, rules, handbooks, dress codes, approved vendors, etc. should all be easily found on your website preferably by a site specific search engine. Typing a few "keywords" should be all the effort required of site visitors to find the information they need.

As you can see, some of this information is static and relatively unchanging, such as policy information and contact information. But the rest can be very dynamic with additions to content occurring almost every day. And without a full time technical person to add content to your website, it would quickly become out of date and your users will not remained engaged; that is unless you have a content management system as the underlying technology running your website. This is where "distributive authoring" comes into play. And this is a crucial concept that needs to be understood, especially at the leadership level of the organization.

Distributive authoring is giving the key stakeholders in your organization the authority, training, and vision of this key role and then giving them the needed tools to publish material relative to their area of responsibility. In other words it is allocating a large task to a group of individuals in order to keep the size of the task manageable. In order for this to occur, you must first designate a group of individuals to take the lead in this process. And based upon my experience, unless the Principal or other key administrator is leading this team it will not be an effective effort.

The technology of which I am most familiar is Joomla, another is Word Press. They are both Open Source solutions which have no licensing fees. There is also Microsoft Sharepoint Technology (not free). These programs are widely adopted, have a worldwide user base, and excellent reliability and stability. There are other programs as well. Do a simple Google search for "Content Management Systems" and see for yourself.

If you are a School Administrator and have failed to implement this sort of technology for your school, you are in my opinion lacking the leadership and vision needed to make fundamental improvements in your organization. Information is power. Empowering students, enabling teachers, and providing administrative efficiency is the responsibility of every Charter School Administrator. And improving your website technology may be the very most important step you take to accomplish this goal. Next week we will discuss social media and how to manage it in conjunction with your website.

The ABC’s of Website Design

Designing a successful website is a challenge because what constitutes a good website is a highly subjective process. To improve your website building experience, you need clear objectives and expectations, the involvement of all key stakeholders, and a clear grasp of these three core components:

We identify these three core components as the ABC's of website design:

1. Artistic and design appeal – Visual and artistic appeal of the website so it looks professional
2. Business process delivery – SEO Optimization, leads, newsletter delivery, ecommerce, publishing, etc.
3. Core Functionality – Operating servers, web pages, content, images, etc

Artistic and Design Appeal

Creating a visually appealing site is the most subjective part of the process. It is also, based upon my experience, the single most common point of failure in a website project. What a web site designer thinks to be a clever design may be in complete contradiction to a customer’s expectations.

And it is generally quite difficult for a non-technical end user to articulate in technical terms how a site should be designed. This is due in large measure to very different perspectives.

Some really clever sites are very simple – example http://www.google.com/ with mostly white space a clear brand and a search box.

Other sites are so complex and full of content, links, moving graphics, and interruptions that it borders on annoyance – example http://www.goddady.com/

Some sites carry a theme or common framework throughout the entire website while others have, no purpose, no consistency – each page looks entirely different.

Because of the unlimited possibilities of design, most companies with self-publishing features offer a couple of basic layouts (templates) and a choice of complimentary color themes. Microsoft’s office.live.com, which offers a free website to Small Business customers is a good example of this.

The more specific an end user is about artistic design elements the more likely a website project will be successful. And it is highly recommended that a professional graphic designer be engaged if the customer does not have existing design elements (graphics, logos, color schemes, etc)

Artistic and Design Appeal is primarily the responsibility of the customer or school.

Business Process Delivery

Determining the results or actions you wish to obtain from site visitors will help you design properly. There are as many business deliverables as there are types and variations of businesses. Some deliverables have not been invented yet, (think about twitter 5 years ago).

As you decide upon site deliverables, consider the following questions:

1. Is your site one-way or two-way. Are you gathering or distributing information or both?
2. Are you just trying to create an online billboard or are you seeking to obtain contact information i.e., email addresses for internal marketing.
3. Are you attempting to cause an action – such as an email inquiry or phone call or are you attempting to automate some process such as managing a newsletter subscription.
4. Are you delivering content for a fee or trying to sell goods?

There are limits, driven mostly by budget, as to what is possible with current technology

Business Process Design is a joint responsibility of you and your web site designer

Core Functionality:

Core technical function, noticed primarily when broken, deals with the basic operation of the pages, links, and processes (forms, calculators, video, etc.) on your site. The complexity of a given website generally hinges on the manner of its design and the programming language that generates the web pages, complexity increases the likelihood of technical failure.

Some websites are extremely complex, with many moving parts, authentication schemes, gateways to other sites, and integration with a corporate network. Other sites are very simple, just a few pages of code that display words, images, and links.

Techno speak aside, the criteria by which you will measure a functional site will likely focus on the following:

1. Do the pages, links, and processes operate quickly and without error
2. Is navigation of your site simple enough to find content quickly
3. Is content delivery convenient for site visitors – can they access and then process information quickly
4. Does your site place well in organic searches with the major search engines

Technical function is primarily the responsibility of your web site designer.

Summary

Many web site projects start and end with very different ideas. It is a dynamic and interactive process between design team and customer. And it must be understood at the outset, that change equals time and time equals expense, so clarity up front results in large savings during the project.

Clear instructions on layout, accompanied by specific color schemes, exact logo’s, trademarks, and graphics are essential elements of design.

Business deliverables need to be clearly set forth and prioritized. Ongoing reviews and improvements in this area are common. Be sure to give ample time for website processes to be evaluated by your site visitors.

Given the wide range of ideas expressed by your key stakeholders, it is unlikely that everyone will be 100% satisfied with every aspect of a website project, but finding an acceptable level of technical function, business process delivery, and artistic and design appeal is possible.