All of the Schools and the main district websites will be moving from Schoolwires/Blackboard to School Loop as the primary web publishing tool. It will save money and help standardize our publishing tools. Secondary Teachers should not experience any change in their School Loop tools. Elementary and Secondary Teachers who actively use Schoolwires will have their content/pages migrated over to the new tool and receive a confirmation email pointing toward training material. Other major editors including Home pages, Counselors and Librarians will be contacted. The goal is to migrate all of the up to date web site content to the new tool.
School Loop Standard 2.0 (SLS2) provides more of an inline editing experience. SLS2 is focused on working well on mobile, style consistency (one font type) and Accessibility ADA compliance. The goal is to have all of our Schools moved over no later than the end of our Schoolwires contract - Feb 28, 2019 (+ 15 day realignment period).
We will send out info on training plans and materials as they are finalized. Comprehensive help page.
Other concerns: A number of sites use friendly urls (like: fremont.k12.ca.us/support) and we hope to continue this after the transition. School Loop site administrator's role will not change because of this transition - they will continue to support their Secondary school in a similar manner.
As of 4/19/18 no school is using the new School Loop tools (SLS2) As of 2/14/19 all Secondary schools are using SLS2. Publishing to the school's home page will be different. The approach will be to post an "Update" on the site - basically a short news story in School Loop - and then the home page shows the "Update" as a headline. The home page design will be close to our current design but simpler with two columns. All the standardized top level navigation labels will stay the same - ABOUT & DEPARTMENTS | TEACHERS & STUDENTS | CALENDARS & NEWS | RESOURCES & CONTACTS.
High School Mock up - American (jpg) | District Mock up (jpg)
Simple test site - Irvington (THIS WENT LIVE 2/4/19)
History of publishing tool plan - presentations to Technology Advisory Committee and district employees over the last couple of years as the Board asked to research our Schoolwires costs. We were waiting for School Loop (almost two years) to stabilize their tool. (2016 presentation with links)
More publishing tool timeline info:
- School Loop has delivered the new publishing tool SLS2 – stable on March 13, 2018 certified by WebAIM as supporting the authoring of ADA/508 compliant content.
- District Web Designer continuously building, testing tools and feature set.
- Stable custom Template delivered by School Loop on April 9, 2018.
- On March 28, 2018 checked and confirmed with School Loop no additional costs for turning on 37+ elementary school websites.
- Some sites may be built in parallel.
Please contact with concerns and if you are interested in training.
Barth Paine
510-657-2350 x12285
bpaine@fremont.k12.ca.us
General publishing tips:
- Use tables for data not layout and borders
- Add Images that provide value (not cutesy) - always add alt text
- Strong Headlines (scanned not read)
- Short Content
- Keep Content Simple as possible
- Friendly conversational tone (not overly academic/not slang)
- Bold important text
- No underlined text (links use underline)
- Less .pdf files (more web page text)