The Barbara Bush Middle School's site seemed rather informative at first. There is a video displaying the days morning announcement along with a bulletin board posting all the informative news happening in the near future. The color in this website is mostly red-it would look much more sound if it contained a variety of colors. The greatest part about this website is how accessible it is towards both the students and parents. There are convenient links along the left hand side of the website that give information to students and teachers alike: calendar, athletics, PTA, clubs and electives, academic teams, and the library.
The part of the Barbara Bush Middle School site that seemed to be a little confusing was towards the bottom of the home page with a link leading to immunization shots. The page I went to had all sorts of different paragraphs listing what types of shots were needed. Going down the list I couldn't even keep track of how many there were.
That was the only part I could really locate that was misinforming about the Barbara Bush Middle School website. They even had "The Watchdog", which was their own online news source . This site contained all of the recent school announcements, athletic events, and performances. Overall, I was very impressed with all the gadgets that this website contained. It is only a public middle school, but the website displays so much information that it is like a college website. I would be proud if I were a parent because this website allows me the opportunity to view how my children are doing in school.
On the other hand the Austin Westlake High School displays similar traits in that it has many accessible links involving the student organization. One link in particular that I found that is beneficial for the parents is the Administrative Staff page. It listed particular teachers and what their experience with teaching children had been. For students there was everything that they needed to know: athletics, fine arts, library, staff handbook, student activities and many more. The one site I absolutely despised was the athletics webpage. All the links were in blue and the writing towards the bottom of the page seemed rather small. However the problem with all the links is that they seemed to be bunched up together on the left hand side. There are also links on the bottom of the homepage that are not underlined so it is harder to tell if it is a link.
Overall I think both webpages contained the same general information. There were links on Westlake Highshcool and Barbara Bush Middle School that were constant: athletics, library, announcements, teachers. The main difference was the Barbara Bush Middle School seemed more professional with the website designs. As a result, I seemed to enjoy the Barbara Bush Middle School website more that the Austin Westlake High School site.
AGREED about the Westlake site. Your evaluation is very thorough, and you used alot of the characteristics of good/bad website designs. Nice job :)
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