Schools’ websites from the point of view of ICT coordinators in Cantabria, Spain

Author(s):

Carmen Alvarez-Alvarez(presenting / submitting)

Conference:

ECER 2016

Network:

16. ICT in Education and Training

Format:

Paper

Session Information

16 SES 11 A, Implementation of ICT in Schools

Paper Session

Time:

2016-08-25

17:15-18:45

Room:

OB-H1.49 (ALE 2)

Chair:

Karl Steffens

Contribution

School websites are not only sources of information and documentation but also means of communication that are increasingly being accessed by members of society, especially by the different educational communities, thanks to the democratisation of Internet access. This paper deals with a qualitative research project in which ICT coordinators of Infant and Primary publicly-funded private schools (concertados) and state schools in urban, rural and semi-urban/rural areas from the Region of Cantabria (Spain) were interviewed in order to understand how school websites are managed.

In the Information and Communication Society that we live in, it has been internalised that the Internet provides the answer to almost all our questions (Castells, 2006). Schools therefore face the challenge of satisfying the curiosity of online visitors through their institutional website (Poock, 2005; Tamatea, Hardy and Ninnes, 2008; Stewart, Jacob Jensen, 2012; Honiges, 2013).

International studies have shown that school websites are gaining more and more interest, although further research into the subject is required (Tubin and Klein, 2007; Hu and Soong, 2007; Hartshorne, Friedman, Algozzine and Kaur, 2008). They are visited ever more frequently, and in the future this trend will increase due to the greater levels of Internet connectivity of stakeholders in education processes and society as a whole (Hartshorne, Friedman, Algozzine and Isibor, 2006; Hu and Soong, 2007; Hartshorne, Friedman, Algozzine and Kaur, 2008).

The ICT coordinator is the person responsible for the school website (Bales, and Mirea Mirea, 2014; Rodríguez-Miranda, Pozuelos-Estrada and Leon-Jariego, 2014). In the coordinator’s absence, that responsibility may be taken on by a member of the management team, whose main task is to ensure the use of the new technologies in the school. A study in Ireland conducted by McGarr and McDonagh (2013) showed that the ICT coordinator plays an important role in tasks such as the implementation of ICT in the curriculum and the maintenance of computer equipment within the school. The study carried out in Spain by Rodriguez-Miranda, Pozuelos-Estrada and Leon-Jariego (2014), based on 101 ICT coordinators in the Andalusia region, revealed that their main roles are working with, and guiding teachers in the use of ICT, and enabling the use of digital content in the school, with the administration of the school website being their least important function. Perhaps this explains that the management of the school website is the least researched of all the tasks performed by ICT coordinators.

While school websites have to achieve an undetermined range of roles and objectives (Tubin and Klein, 2007), they all have the challenge of providing truthful, useful, comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date information (Du Preez, 2007) for all kinds of people. This challenge falls at the feet of the ICT coordinator.

The ideal site should: provide accurate, useful, comprehensive, relevant and up-to-date information to potential visitors, both internal and external to the school (Hu and Soong, 2007; Du Preez, 2007); facilitate communication with them to the greatest extent through the web; and not overindulge in marketing.

In the Cantabria region, all publicly-funded schools have at least one official web portal (generated by the Educantabria platform, which is under the aegis of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sports), and sometimes another portal on a proprietary domain, or a blog that is managed independently. This in itself comes to illustrate the importance given by them to the Internet: the schools in the region are in the process of opening up to society as a whole through online means. However, there are notable differences between the websites of the schools in the region. This study seeks to explore how these sites are being managed today.

Method

This paper describes a study on the websites of Primary Education schools supported by public funding in the Cantabria region (known in Spanish as ‘Comunidad Autónoma’ or Autonomous Community). To do so, a qualitative study was designed based on interviews with ICT school coordinators and managers of Educantabria, an educational portal whereby the regional authority provides virtual support to, and maintenance of, the official websites of schools that want to use it. Nine ICT coordinators or managers and 2 managers of the Educantabria Portal were interviewed. In the selection of the ICT coordinators/ managers two requirements were taken into account: that both public and publicly-funded private (concertados) schools—Primary and Infant education—were represented; and that they served urban, rural and semi-urban/rural environments, in order to better understand the role played by the management of school websites in all types of schools in Cantabria. The ICT coordinators and managers interviewed were distributed as follows: 4 worked in public schools (two urban, one semi-urban/rural and one rural) and 5 in publicly-funded private schools (concertados) (2 urban, 2 semi-urban/rural, 1 rural). The following abbreviations are used to distinguish between them: (P) public, (PFP) publicly-funded private schools (concertados); (U) urban, (S) semi-urban/rural; (R) rural. The themes dealt with in the interviews were: 1. People involved in the daily management of the school website, their training and their role. 2. The history of the school's official website, its updating, how it currently works, and challenges for the future. 3. The school’s ICT resources and its assessment of the Educantabria Portal. 4. Sources of documentation for improving the school's website, reports received from visitors and school’s evaluation of its own website. The interviews were recorded and later transcribed and analysed by using content analysis procedures.

Expected Outcomes

First, it was found that the managers of school websites have very different levels of involvement, which has a positive effect on their quality. Overall, a slightly higher interest in this tool was shown in publicly-funded private urban schools, as it is deemed to be used for informative and marketing purposes, and plays a part in attracting new students (Honiges, 2013). All of the collected statements showed that managing a school website today is easy and requires no sophisticated specific training, although it does take time and dedication. Additionally, very different management practices were found depending on the people who were responsible for the website: whether there was a single leader, several leaders, they were working with a company, they were dependent on a larger home website such as that of a religious congregation, etc. All of this suggests that for a website to be up-to-date, thorough and provide useful information, the collaboration and cooperation of everyone in the school's educational community is needed: management team, teaching staff, parents' association, partner organisations, etc. It is very difficult to maintain an up-to-date and comprehensive website if a single individual is responsible for it (ICT coordinator or manager). It must be noted that the general development of websites has been mainly positive. The initial stages were hard: there was large dependence on computer experts and the resulting websites were static. However, today's websites are much easier to create and maintain and the Educational Authority—with its Educantabria format—provides technological and training support. This does not mean that the managers of the websites do not need to continue working to ensure that the websites are thorough and fully up-to-date, but that the current situation, compared with the past, is highly positive (Du Preez, 2007).

References

Castells, M. (2006). La sociedad red. Madrid: Alianza. Du Preez, H. J. (2007). Issues to consider during the development and promotion of a primary school web site. South Africa: University of Pretoria. Hartshorne, R., Friedman, A., Algozzine, B., Isibor, T. (2006). Secondary Schools Online: Are High School Web Sites Effective? American Secondary Education, 34 (2), 50-66. Hartshorne, R., Friedman, A., Algozzine, B. & Kaur, D. (2008). Analysis of Elementary School Web Sites. Educational Technology & Society, 11 (1), 291-303. Honiges, A. (2013). School image in the context of new communication technology. Knowledge Horizons-Economics, 5 (2), 162-166. Hu, C., & Soong, A. K. F. (2007). Beyond Electronic Brochures: An Analysis of Singapore Primary School Web Sites. Educational Media International, 44(1), 33-42. McGarr, O., & McDonagh, A. (2013). Examining the role of the ICT coordinator in Irish post-primary schools. Technology, Pedagogy and Education, 22 (2), 267-282. DOI: 10.1080/1475939X.2012.755132 Poock, M. (2005). Determining the Design of Effective Graduate School Web sites. College and University Journal, 80 (3), 23-26. Rodríguez-Miranda, F. P., Pozuelos-Estrada, F. J., León-Jariego, J. C. (2014). The role of ICT coordinator. Priority and time dedicated to professional functions. Computers & Education, 72, 262-270. DOI: 10.1016/j.compedu.2013.11.009 Stewart, T., Jacob, A. M., Jensen, L. I. (2012). School Site Visits: What Can We Learn From Choice Schools in Milwaukee. Milwaukee Evaluation Report, 34. Tamatea, L., Hardy, J., Ninnes, P. (2008). Paradoxical inscriptions of global subjects: critical discourse analysis of international schools' websites in the Asia-Pacific Region. Critical Studies in Education, 49 (2), 157-170. DOI: 10.1080/17508480802040241 Tubin, D., & Klein, S. (2007). Designing a School Website: Contents, Structure, and Responsiveness. Planning and Changing, 38 (3-4), 191-207.

Author Information

Carmen Alvarez-Alvarez (presenting / submitting)

University of Cantabria

Education

santander

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