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O.P.E.N. Project Profile 20 Apr 2000 Project Title: OSLIS Elementary Web Site Project Contact Person, e-mail, phone: Sheryl Steinke, Library Media Specialist, Eugene School District 4J, steinke@4j.lane.edu Use this worksheet in planning your OPEN Web project. It will help focus your attention on what exactly your project is, what you want it to do, and will help the OPEN design team create a functional specification and design a product that fulfills your expectations. Use as much space as you need. I. Background and Goals II. Audience, Content, and Functionality III. The Field Trip IV. Testing, Training, Marketing I. Background and Goals Organization Please provide a description of your organization. Include contact information and a description of the group who will be working on the project. Who's responsible for what? What human resources do you have for various stages of the process? Oregon School Library Information System (OSLIS) is a partnership of educational organizations dedicated to ensuring the academic success of Oregon students through the use of full-text online library resources. The partners are: Oregon Educational Media Association (OEMA) - school library media specialists: provide content and select online resources Oregon Public Education Network (OPEN) - technical experts: design, create, and host Web site Oregon Education Technology Consortium (OETC) - purchasing agent/negotiators Western Oregon University/Teaching Research (WOU/TR) - evaluation professionals Who are the decision-makers? The pilot-school media specialists; Sheryl Steinke, elementary project manager. Project What is the mission statement or summary of your project? Provide cost-effective access to online research Provide curriculum-based value-added products Assist Oregon students in becoming information-literate citizens What are the basic goals of this project? Make it easy for young children to do research: Provide easy access to online resources Provide help with using the online resources Teach how and where to find information Develop decision-making skills Develop research skills Develop an understanding of basic Internet and research vocabulary What outcome will make this project successful? How will you measure success? The project will be successful if it's easy for kids to use, and if it grows (i.e., we can expand the number of OSLIS schools) Teaching Research will develop evaluation tools Pilots will develop a pretest. Students will take the pretest at the beginning of the 1999-2000 school year, will be tested again at the end of the school year, and test results will be compared Usage statistics from the online-resources vendors OPEN server-log analysis to determine number of hits per page What are your schedule requirements? Pilots meeting June 4, 1999, for content and preliminary design review Pilots retreat August 16-17, 1999, for Web-site review. There should be several reviews before that point so we don't get to August 16 and discover we're way off base Final Web site in place by beginning of the 1999-2000 school year (date?) What is the budget for this project? $32,750 to OPEN from the LSTA grant (both elementary & secondary); $20,000 from TLCF grant. Will the Web site reinforce an existing branding or marketing strategy? How? OSLIS logo Marketing strategy is not yet developed; it should be aimed at principals and media specialists Discuss any identity/branding/design assets (logos, other artwork, and fonts) or issues. Incorporate the OSLIS logo Enable a link to the OSLIS secondary home page and vice versa Design a site that complements the OSLIS secondary site (incorporate elements that fit as appropriate, but the focus here is elementary students so it may be very different from the secondary site, and that's OK) Use graphics that are attractive to kids, but also simple, clean-looking, and fast-loading (see SIRS for example) Use bright colors Use a font style and size that's easy for elementary kids to read Use <font face="comic sans ms, arial, helvetica"> Make site navigation simple Use short chunks of information Rank the following, in order of importance: (H = high, M = medium, L = low) [ H ] Creating a community of dedicated visitors [ H ] People bookmark the site because they get so much out of it regularly [ H ] Quality execution (graphics, writing, navigation, etc.) [ H ] Ease of maintenance [ M ] Time to market [ M ] Staying within the budget [ M ] Sending the message that we know the Web and use it appropriately Top of page II. Audience, Content, and Functionality Audience What types of visitors do you want to attract (e.g., students, teachers)? What are their traits (what kind of work will they be doing, what's their experience with the Web, why will they come, will they use the resources on their own or with help)? Elementary students (primary) Kids will be teacher-directed, parent-directed, or media specialist-directed when using the site They'll try anything They need visual cues They have limited vocabulary They have limited keyboarding skills Elementary students (intermediate) They have an expanding but still limited vocabulary They have limited keyboarding They're more independent than primary; they will have some independent projects They will use the lessons (how to) independently as well as with adult direction Media Specialists They're good organizers They teach library skills They help kids with projects They help kids find information They will use the OSLIS lessons (how to) with groups of kids They're "book pushers" All levels of Internet experience Teachers They want help with helping kids meet the academic benchmarks They're looking for information to help students do projects Many are reluctant users of technology All levels of Internet experience Parents They want to help their kids All levels of Internet experience What are your goals for each type of visitor? What are the products/services involved? Elementary students (primary) Teach information-literacy skills Provide information resources Elementary students (intermediate) Same as for primary Media Specialists Provide them with tools to help them teach information-literacy skills Reinforce the importance of library resources Provide a means for them to submit comments about the site or the resources Provide a means for them to submit information-literacy curriculum (from LMS Desk?) Teachers Same as for media specialists Parents Make the site user-friendly enough that they will be able to easily figure out how to help their kids - the words "obvious," "useful," and "supportive" come to mind Reinforce the importance of library resources Products/services involved: SIRS Discoverer (online database; access restricted to subscribers) World Book Online (online database; access restricted to subscribers) Other subscription-based online resources may be added in the future What are your goals for these products/services? We want schools all across the state to subscribe and use the OSLIS site as a portal Provide statewide access to information resources and information-literacy curriculum Be a user friendly, reliable, well-respected, and useful site, and through these qualities gain exposure and an avenue for recruiting new and augmented information-literacy curriculum Content Where will content come from? Pilots will create lessons (how to) Teaching Research, with input from pilots, will create pretest Pilots will identify other sites to link to Some content is available on OSLIS secondary site Teaching Research will develop evaluation tools Pilots will write project summary Pilots will provide list and demographic information for pilots and URLs of their library Web sites Will it be new, restructured, or both? New How often will you add new content? The dream is to provide statewide access to information resources for K-12 schools Pretest will need to be rewritten from year to year Links to member-school library Web sites will need to be maintained External links will need to be re-evaluated, refreshed OSLIS database of member schools will need to be maintained. [This will depend on whether we actually need a database in order to achieve centralized access to the resources.] Teaching Research - evaluation tools/forms will be added periodically Who will update the content? OSLIS will maintain the database of member schools. Hopefully, an OSLIS curriculum person can update the content. The site should be designed so that it can be easily maintained by OSLIS (at the very least, simple stuff like adding schools, updating or changing links). Functionality What functional requirements do you believe to be necessary? (e.g., download areas, database-driven Web pages, forms, conferencing, applications, etc.) File names that reflect the content of the file and are easily identifiable, e.g., pretest_prim.html, howtofind.html URLs, page titles, and page headings should be aligned (labeled consistently with each other) so that the user does not get three different versions of the same thing Access to online subscriber resources using the OSLIS site as a portal, based on individual school profiles stored in an online database, if it is determined that such a database is necessary in order to achieve centralized access Works Cited form - students fill in and print bibliography cards ("electronic index cards") - not sure exactly how it should work yet Downloadable pretest(s), evaluation tools/forms [OSLIS wants to explore the use of QuizServer for creating pretests and post-tests] OSLIS "Suggestions and Comments" - a simple form for users to submit feedback, suggestions, comments. Send to oslis-suggest@open.k12.or.us Alias for "oslis-suggest@open.k12.or.us" Who will update these functionalities? OPEN will maintain the online database (OSLIS will maintain the data that is dumped into the online database) OPEN will maintain technical aspects of the Works Cited form(s), downloadable tests and tools OPEN will implement access to new subscriber resources as necessary, with assistance from OSLIS technical coordinator OSLIS will notify OPEN whenever an alias needs to be updated (i.e., directed to someone else); OPEN will maintain the alias Are there extraordinary security issues? Schools subscribe to the online resources. These are not public resources, i.e., access is restricted to the subscribing schools. Are there other technical issues or limitations? No animated GIFs Pages must load fast (kids won't wait) Pilots were required to have 56K access to the Internet in order to apply for OSLIS, however, we need to accommodate users accessing the site at lower speeds from home] Pages accessible for users with disabilities Many articles in the online resources are available in PDF format; some have audio files, some have video or large graphics Who will maintain the site contents? OSLIS is hiring a half-time content specialist. We hope that this person can maintain the site contents. What is your long-term plan for the site? The dream is to provide statewide access to information resources for K-12 schools. Top of page III. The Field Trip This part of the profile is very important. The more work you put into it, the more your project will benefit. Find the three highest quality sites (more is better) on the Web that relate to your project in the following categories: Appeal to same target group of customers * * * Colors, look-and-feel, user interface, layout * * * Size of site * * * Size of project * * * Publishing model (frequency, novelty of content, etc.) * * * Quality of content * * * Quality of graphics * * * Functionality (things sites do for people) * * * Community, special features, responsiveness, other categories important to your project * * * Overall favorite sites (for whatever reasons) * * * Top of page IV. Testing, Training, Marketing Documentation Describe what kind of user documentation you believe is needed (e.g., glossary, online help, other). Who will write it? Glossary - written by piloters Online help - We are hoping that the site is so well designed that it won't require help. We'll find this out next year as the pilot schools start to use the site Training Do you believe users will need training on using the site? What kind of training do you anticipate? Who is responsible for organizing it? I think we've found out from the secondary site that training is necessary. OSLIS Steering Committee will be responsible for designing and organizing it. Marketing How will you market the site? Who is responsible? OSLIS Steering Committee is responsible The piloters themselves will do a lot of the marketing Quality Control Your project will go through an OPEN quality-control process but your own project team is the first line of defense. Who in your organization will be responsible for quality control, particularly content? Sheryl Steinke Testing Will your project require testing beyond "normal" quality control, e.g., usability testing? Will you be able to gather or assist in gathering a group of test subjects? Who should they be? If we need to do this, we'll ask the piloters to assist. Maybe have them find someone else in their district who hasn't been involved in the development. For design guidelines, also see the OPEN WWW Server Standards and Guidelines and Web-Page Checklist. This form was adapted from David Siegel's "Project Profiler," online at http://www.secretsites.com/. Accessed April 29, 1999. Top of page