As regular visitors to my website would have read, I recently highlighted the inability of my son’s school to update parents through the Net, whether through emails or the school website. This is despite having suggested it to the school some months before. This got me thinking as to what I would like to see on a school website. I will be looking at it from the communications point of view, that is, communications with the stake holders of the school in mind.

The first thing I would like to see are regular updates of the school website. By “regular”, I mean that information is posted on the school website as soon as possible and not “regular” as in once in three months or even more. This I think is a basic demand of any communication between schools and their stake holders. If Singapore schools are serious about Community and Parents in Support of Schools (COMPASS), then they should make greater effort to communicate about what is happening with the confines of a school. If possible I would like to see daily updates.

Some of you (who may be teachers or principals) out there, may think that daily updates is just too much and impossible. But it can be done. However, for this to happen certain things must change in the mind set of those in schools. The first is a paradigm shift in the minds of those in power in schools. They must be willing to allow their staff to post notices on their own. It means that the website is not the prerogative of one or two people or worse, an external website designer. School principals in Singapore are reluctant to do this because of a fear mentality. They have this fear that someone in their staff will post something silly and the school will have to do some damage control. This fear of damage control means that everything posted to the public has to be vetted by the “powers-that-be”.

This fear of mistakes and need for damage control also stems from the siege mentality that schools have as compared to other government departments in Singapore who are more open to public scrutiny. There is almost an unstated rule, that teachers and school principals cannot be criticized in public. They also cannot appear to be fallible. I guess it is part of a “teacher mystique” cultivated in Singapore in order to ensure the high standing that teachers have. It may also come from their own unconscious belief that they are always right and have all the answers. Schools must be willing to allow their staff to make mistakes and not treat such public mistakes as “disaster movies”. The Ministry of Education (MOE) in Singapore have long introduced the concept of “learning organizations” borrowed from Peter Senge and others. Making mistakes is a part of the learning process, even if it is done in public. Part of the learning for the staff of the school is how to recover from a mistake. Imagine for a moment, a school where its teachers preach to the students that it is alright to make mistakes even in public, and yet cannot accept that from the teachers. That would be either hypocrisy or schizophrenia. Is it also a surprise that students still do not want to look foolish by making mistakes when they can sense that it is not the school culture to value mistakes? These institutionalized mind sets must be removed.

Once schools can overcome this institutionalized attitudes and mind sets, regular daily updates by all staff will no longer be an issue. The technical problems of allowing everyone to post on the website can be easily overcome. Staff members can be assigned accounts with passwords to access the school website. Sophisticated, yet free and easily available software can be used to design the school websites. Free Content Management Systems (CMS) software like Joomla! are easily available for use and because they are CMS, they can do all that I have suggested. The school can also be less dependent on commercial website designers and take full responsibility for the wesbite’s maintenance.

Once the basic framework of the website is set, all staff can post information relevant to the students online. Parents who used to complain about the “interception” of traditional official communication like letters between the school and them, will not have to worry about it anymore.

Other technical issues like creating automatic email lists and other “new” communication media like Twitter are easily overcome. They can be done easily once the main obstacle to the creation of a communicative school website is removed or replaced. That obstacle is in the minds of those who run a school. It is no longer a technical issue.

Today if you do not have enough financial resources to acquire and run basic Office-like applications, you would still be able to do so in two ways. The first is to switch to Open Source Software (OSS) and the second is to rely on a the Net. OSSs, like Linux-based software are not only mostly free and legal but also easy to use. Computer users accustomed to working with graphical user interfaces will find that Linux-based software have a similar feel. With regards to applications on the Net, Google, for example, has headed in the direction of providing web users with Office-like applications for free. The thinking now is that the world is headed towards using web-based applications and moving away from individually installed software on PCs for both work and play. This is now seen as a strategy that is part of a new business model for technology companies like Google.

This shift is itself a lesson for educators and schools. This shift is, on the whole, a positive thing too for education.  The provision of free web-based applications means that costs for using ICT in schools all over the world would be reduced considerably as schools no longer would have to be too worried about the cost of software licensing. The high costs of software licensing has caused many schools especially in the Third World to use illegally installed software.

Schools that face problems with funding, can now turn to both OSS and also the Net. For these schools, it means that good internet connection becomes important. In some countries, for example, Indonesia, good internet connection is hard to come by. The government of Indonesia has plans for a nation-wide network for the Internet however this is likely to take some time before its completion. The alternative is to use commercially-owned internet service providers which can be more expensive than in developed countries where competition helps to drive down prices. However, with the savings made from not having to pay for software licenses, schools could seriously consider these commercial internet service providers as a viable alternative to gain access to teaching resources.

Furthermore with the advent of cheap, no frills laptops, schools would spend less than if they had to spend on more powerful desktops designed to run the bloated applications found installed on most desktops and laptops today. The cheap laptops are a good alternative to using desktops because of their mobility. This mobility would mean that the school can buy fewer computers as they can be moved around the classrooms as and when is needed. All the laptops need to do is to be able to connect to the internet and run OSS, which in general can run on less powerful and cheaper machines too.

Schools can obtain very good learning management systems (LMSs) for free. OSSs like Moodle and also content management systems like Joomla! are also free. One can design sophisticated online courses using Moodle that can rival (or even be better than) the more expensive well-known commercial ones. Schools can use Joomla! for almost any purpose to connect and communicate in anyway they want with their stakeholders. All they require is server space. Here again is more good news for educators. The price of servers have been tumbling so schools also have the option of just simply buying server space so they would not have to worry about the maintenance of servers. The cost of server space has never been cheaper. Many come with easily-installed software for schools to use.

Clearly the alternative route for schools intending to use ICT for education has never been clearer and cheaper. Schools must capitalise on these possibilities if they want to take advantage of great learning possibilities and for their students to acquire the new literacies of the 21st century.