There are countless examples of individual PreK-12 and Higher Education teachers and professors using WordPress for course websites, along with a long list of institutions that use it as a universal platform for their staff to share course information and resources. Some universities and districts have large IT and web development departments or may use outside developers. But can a school district or college with a lean IT/web department and even leaner budget still implement a reliable, professional, and effective WordPress infrastructure for course websites? In this session, we will look at guiding philosophies and specific ways in which educational technologists can use WordPress Multisite and a series of plugins and customizations to accomplish these goals.

1. BUILDING A NETWORK
OF PUBLIC SCHOOL
WEBSITES ON A PUBLIC
SCHOOL BUDGET
Jon Moss
Avon Public
Schools
Avon, CT
edvantaged.com

2. WHERE ARE WE NOW?
Teacher websites in Avon Public Schools vary in
Content/Features
Design
Structure
Platform
Accuracy

3. WORDPRESS

4. SCHOOL NOTES

5. GOOGLE SITES

6. FIRST CLASS

7. SINGLE PAGE

8. MULTIMEDIA

9. BLOGS

10. SOCIAL MEDIA

11. SKIES OF BLUE

12. SEAS OF GREEN

13. ALL PINK, ALL THE TIME!

14. OUT OF DATE

15. MISSING CONTENT

16. NON-EXISTANT!

17. CURRENT FEATURES ON PK-4 TEACHER
WEBSITES
Links
Schedule
Other
Newsletter
Welcome
Contact Me
About Me
Resources
Roster
Files
Policies
Spelling
Calendar
Curriculum
Homework
Quotations
Photos
Conferences
Program Info
Math Facts
Class Descriptions
Volunteering
0
5
10
15
20
25
30

18. WHAT WE NEED
A platform that...
 Unifies teacher websites within one system
 Promotes consistent design elements
 Maintains certain minimum required features in teacher
websites
 Has the flexibility to meet dif ferent teachers’ needs
 Social media, forums, file hosting, student work showcase, etc.
 Low cost and ad-free

19. MOBILE VOICE TELEPHONY

20. PORTABLE COMPUTING

21. SITE-WIDE TELECOMMUNICATION

22. PERSONAL DATA MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

23. DESKTOP COMPUTERS FOR CODING

24. WHAT WE NEED
A platform that...
 Unifies teacher websites within one system
 Promotes consistent design elements
 Maintains certain minimum required features in teacher
websites
 Has the flexibility to meet dif ferent teachers’ needs
 Social media, forums, file hosting, student work showcase, etc.




Low
Can
Can
Has
cost and ad-free
be deployed mostly by in -house IT and ET staf f
be used by novice teachers with a minimum of training.
the flexibility to meet future district needs.

25. Information
Technology
Educational
Technology
Web
Developer
and
Designer

26. WHAT WE NEED
A platform that...
 Unifies teacher websites within one system
 Promotes consistent design elements
 Maintains certain minimum required features in teacher
websites
 Has the flexibility to meet dif ferent teachers’ needs
 Social media, forums, file hosting, student work showcase, etc.




Low
Can
Can
Has
cost and ad-free
be deployed mostly by in -house IT and ET staf f
be used by novice teachers with a minimum of training.
the flexibility to meet future district needs.

27. WHERE TO BEGIN
 Make firm decisions about default options (comments, user
permissions, etc.)
 Rule by exception
 Secure proper hosting and backup services.
 Create Multisite installation (great support on Codex)
 Use the User Role Editor plugin to establish custom roles and
permissions.
 What will be norm for granting permissions?
 Give more permissions or give fewer permissions?
 Select and configure your theme and settings.
 Install and test plugins.

28. SETTING UP SITES
 Create template site
 Include required pages, components, sidebar widgets, etc.
 Will you have a universal template site or individual template sites
for each building?
 Register users
 Consider mass-registering users if you have a large number of
accounts to create and configure.
 Use the Blog Copier plugin to duplicate and customize your
template sites.
 Set up teacher accounts on each site.

29. USER MANAGEMENT
 Start with a predefined set of permissions (usually “Editor”)
 Add as necessary:







add_users
create_users
delete_users
edit_users
list_users
remove_users
edit_theme_options
 Promote as necessary
 Demote users as necessary or upon request

30. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY...
 Provide organized, dif ferentiated training.
 Avoid this:

31. AND...
Give your
users
control, per
mission, and
skills to
make their
site what is
right for
them and
their class!

32. SAMPLE NETWORK OF SITES
Join us at
www.edvantaged.com/msdemo

33. CHALLENGES
 Fine-tuning user permissions
 Will be resolved during the PILOT PROCESS (a must!)
 Embedding HTML (based on permissions)
 Hiding menu options for some user (perhaps based on
permissions?)

34. ONGOING MANAGEMENT ADVANTAGES
 Search by date of last update
 Archive sites that are no longer active
 Ease of access for troubleshooting

35. WHAT WE NEED
A platform that...
 Has the flexibility to meet dif ferent teachers’ needs
 Social media, forums, file hosting, student work showcase, etc.
 Can be deployed mostly by in -house IT and ET staf f
 Can be used by novice teachers with a minimum of training.

36. THANK YOU!
Jon Moss
@JonMossEdTech
jonmossedtech@edvantaged.com
www.edvantaged.com
Thank you
Boston
and
Microsoft NERD Center!