As of this week, 106,000 schools and 16,409 school districts across the US have cookie-cutter homepages waiting for them - all they have to do is get motivated to fill in the blanks in the templates. Combining lofty goals of educational equality with community action, the Family Education Network and the American School Directory are offering free Web sites to every school in the nation and getting big business to foot the bill.
"It's in the hands of the parents and schools," says Family Education Network president Jon Carson. "We're trying to start a movement getting parents and communities involved in the education of kids."
Family Education Network, the producers of an eight-year-old education newsletter, began its project of providing a Web site for every school district earlier this year, when it wired up all of Maryland and then New Jersey. With the hefty educational endorsements of the FCC, the National PTA, the American Association for School Administrators, and the National School Board, the network officially launched across the rest of the US on Monday.
For each school district, the Family Education Network provides a meta-site with feature articles on educational and family topics, access to localized news and weather, and state resources. Parents and administrators then take on the responsibility for downloading the site update software, registering the district and its schools as members, and using the provided templates to upload individual school information such as calendars, curriculum, PTA meeting minutes, and news. Community tools allow parents and teachers to join in discussion boards within their school district or across the country, get tips from experts in family, education and health matters, and exchange educational advice in the "Best Practices" area.
Three thousand schools have already signed up as premium members. Although all district sites are identical at the moment, Carson says that future packages will offer custom templates.
But the schools might end up with more than just one Web site: American School Directory, which officially launched on 24 September, is also offering a free homepage for each of the 106,000 schools in the US. Similar to the Family Education Network, each school in the ASD receives a bare-bones Web site with basic information about each school, which administrators can then fill in using an online update form. Instead of bulletin boards and discussion groups, however, ASD offers free email to students, parents and teachers. One thousand schools signed up in the first week.
"We were looking at the schools that had Web sites, and of the ones that were there most were upper-class schools that could afford a webmaster," explains Tom Wiley, public relations director for ASD. "We wanted to create a level playing field for all the schools. That's our mission and goal: equality."
Of course, the issue of equality goes beyond simple ability to hire the talent to build a Web site - the only parents, kids, and teachers who can access their school's brand-spanking-new Web sites will of course be the ones who have Net access. Negating the gap between the technology have's and have-not's is a primary goal in the education market, and one which educational technology consultant Peter Grunwald says is being taken seriously by the government. While only 14 percent of all classrooms were wired up in 1996, Grunwald's upcoming study projects that the combination of NetDay, the US$2.2 billion in technology discounts for schools mandated in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, and numerous grants will have 48 percent of all classrooms connected to the Net by 2000.
Beyond school computers, those in the educational technology industry are hoping that creation of Web sites and online applications for schools will also encourage more parents to get computers. Recognizing that education is one of the "lead drivers" of family technology purchases, FEN is putting ads in local newspapers in each school district announcing the presence of the schools' Web site and online communities.
"Companies that are successful in either the school or home market won't be able to ignore either one. There's a push-and-pull effect taking place," says Grunwald. "Schools are pulling families online, and the interest that exists in higher-income families is pushing schools to get online. The reality is that only with a FEN-type service are those two markets going to take fruit."
Of course, the only reason ASD and FEN are able to offer free Web sites is because of their sponsorships from heavy-hitters in the business market. Big corporations are falling all over themselves to align themselves with lofty educational technology projects - FEN has picked up US West, AT&T, Fleet Bank, and Century 21 as national sponsors, and ASD has IBM, Apple, and Computers for Education. As Liz Randolph, kids' technology analyst with Jupiter puts it, "Companies are willing to spend a lot of money to be associated with a program like this."
Most crucial, however, is getting those families and administrators to use those templates and really get their sites up and running. FEN's Carson says that shouldn't be a problem: "They're accepting that this is inevitable. It's less an issue of are they going to be wired than it is when. They don't want their community to be left behind."
