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Many New Mexico
Educators Federal Credit Union member groups have sites on the World Wide
Web, and Albuquerque Public Schools (APS) is one of them. Besides having
a website (also known as a homepage) for the district, many of the individual
schools also have websites.
Whether it's the district's website, or an individual elementary, middle or high school website, the purpose behind all is to share their purpose and current information to the students, their parents and the community at large.
A website is a place on the Internet where an individual or organization can publish information about themselves, a subject of interest, or anything they wish. This information is available to anyone with a computer, a connection to the Internet and a piece of software known as a browser.
Ken Tully, manager of Software and Training for APS and webmaster of the district's website, says the goal of the district's website is to be a place where students, teachers, parents and anyone in the community can find out what is going on in the district.
The website includes the APS Board's meeting schedule and agendas, school addresses and phone numbers, career opportunities at APS, and links to teacher resources and to individual school homepages. Tully said more information is being added all the time.
Georgia O'Keeffe Elementary School's website has been created and maintained by Gretchen Gaskill since summer 1996. An electrical engineer for Honeywell, she has worked with the school's staff and administration to create a website that both informs the community and involves the students and teachers.
Georgia O'Keeffe's website has been recognized by World Village, Education World and The Yellow Link Page for its outstanding design and content. Gaskill said the main benefit of the site is that it has served as a starting point for many other technology-driven projects at the school.
While some schools have relied on the efforts of volunteers to create their websites, other school websites have been created by faculty members. At the high school level, however, student teams are the ones busy putting up websites with information about their schools.
Kennedy Middle School's website was created and maintained by John Beahm, a computer teacher at the school. The Kennedy site was picked as the Discovery Channel Spotlight School on October 13, 1997, for the amount of information the site contains and its involvement of the students.
Beahm said the students enjoy learning how to create pages and many of them have received e-mail from other students from all over the world.
"Some of the things you teach about computers is abstract, but creating web pages gives them immediate results," Beahm said.
At the high school level most of the websites have been created by student teams. Del Norte High School is one of those schools, where the students put up their website in September 1997.
Cheri Burch is the faculty advisor for the Del Norte team, helping the students work with administrators and faculty to determine what information needs to be on the website. The actual website creation and maintenance is handled by the students.
The team includes seniors David Druyor and Eric Johnson, co-webmasters, and Ryan Medalie, juniors Marty Roof and Sara Roberts, and sophomore Brian Akins.
Druyor said that while the coordination has been difficult due to the students' schedules, "I've learned a lot about networks and how web pages work."
He added that in creating the website he has also been able to work with administrators and other people he might not have been able to work with otherwise.
Both Kennedy Middle School's and Del Norte High School's websites can be reached from the APS website at www.aps.edu/aps/index.html by clicking on the "School Home Pages" link.
Whether the websites are created by an involved volunteer, a dedicated
faculty member or energetic students, the end result is a community that
is better informed about the activities and purpose of their schools.
