Case Study: G&T Website
"The site was built from the ground up using web standards and to comply with the latest guidelines for web content accessibility."
Project Aims:
- To share the good G&T practice in Rotherham with colleagues.
- To improve and modernise our communication system with Rotherham G&T and AimHigher coordinators within the borough.
- To bring together a G&T Rotherham community.
- To provide colleagues with easy access to lesson planning and ideas for provision for G&T pupils.
How was the project run and catered for:
The Rotherham G&T team met with the Web Applications Officer to discuss what we were trying to achieve & what our aims are, he gave us advice as to how this could be achieved and also on how to set up a site and what we should incorporate into it.
Throughout the development of our ideas Andy (the CLC Web Applications Officer) has given us advice and support, not just in terms of the technical details but also in terms of copyright, website format, what sites to link to, security and systems for adding information.
The Web Applications Officer has constructed the Website for us from the ground up and has agreed to maintain and update it for us. He has also offered us training on how to manage the site and work with the content management system Macromedia Contribute
The site was built from the ground up using web standards and to comply with the latest guidelines for web content accessibility.
Outcomes of the project:
The site current site was launched in January 2005. To put it into perspective, in December 2005 the site got 19 unique visitors with a total of 103 server hits. After the site launch in January the unique visitor count increased by 50 to 69 and the total server hits rose to 790.
This increase was anticipated but it was expected to peak out in February, the month after launch, when most people who would want to visit the site would have visited already and only the regular visitors were expected to remain.
The results for February were encouraging. The total unique visitors rose again by 28 to 97 and the total server hits rose inline by 230 to 1020. These results were very encouraging and it was thought that this would be a peak of interest and that the numbers would lower and level off. This was not the case.
The total unique visitors rose again by 51 to 148 which in turn meant a rise in the total server hits which currently stands at 1698 for this month alone.
The site is new and is not expected to take up a good ranking with Google, the worlds most popular search engine, for a few months yet. This is nothing unusual as sites need to gain a certain level of maturity before they are included in Googles search results.
At the moment the site is listed on Yahoo which is a major player in the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo & MSN search). Rotherham G&T is ranking exceptionally within Yahoo based on the sites relative infancy.
The site tops the rankings when searching for "Rotherham Gifted & Talented" as you would expect, "Rotherham Gifted" and also "Rotherham Talented". A search for "Rotherham G&T" returns a result in top 3 which is still an excellent position given the amount of time the site has been "live".
The aims of the project were simple but effective. The original aims were met and expanded upon as the project began to take shape. It was also decided that the site would be extended to include areas that showcase the work of the students from various G&T curriculum extension and after school groups.
This is an area of the site that seems to be popular with the children in the various classes. In particular the children in the "Webmasters" after school classes.
The aim of this class was to teach the children how to build a web page and also expose them to the industry standard software, in this case Macromedia Dreamweaver.
The final pages built by the children were brought together and put on the Rotherham G&T website so that the children could access their pages from any computer, which was important due to the fact that an earlier itteration of this class completed their pages but unfortunatly G&T did not have a website on which to host their work, plus the added bonus of providing inspiration for other G&T networks across the borough and potentially nationwide.