PETERBOROUGH 一 Superintendent Dr. Kimberly Rizzo Saunders and District Systems Administrator Mark Schaub are proud to announce a new website system for ConVal’s eight elementary schools, two middle schools, the high school, the school district, and the ConVal school board.
“The current website, which is WordPress-based, was developed during the 2014-2015 school year and went live in September of that year,” said Saunders. “It was a great website when it launched and has served us well over the years. However, there have been major advancements in web design in the last eight years, and the new websites take these developments into account.”
“Perhaps the biggest change has been the advent of mobile-first responsive design,” Schaub added. “We know from data we have collected that we routinely have an 85:15 split in the way parents and students access our websites — 85% of our website visitors now use smartphones or tablets to access school information.”
A concurrent development that influenced the redesign choices has been the district’s increasing use of Google Workspace for Education over the last decade. ConVal’s blended learning environment is based on this education-focused suite of Google apps as the flexible and secure foundation for learning, collaboration, and communication.
The new website is 100% Google integrated and takes full advantage of the principle of distributive authoring and versioning (DAV) that is facilitated by collaborative Google apps. This means that information can be updated more quickly and easily across multiple websites. “Website users will see a marked improvement in the way that district and school calendars are integrated at the school level. They will also be able to toggle between school news and district news with a single click,” Schaub noted.
“We have been fortunate to work very closely with SchoolBlocks of Carbondale, Colorado, over the last several months as we reconceptualized our websites and how important information should be presented to end users. Their technology team has been outstanding in facilitating our transition,” Schaub continued. “We are also among the first school districts in the country to use several new features they have rolled out over the summer, including the terraced pages that are featured on each of the schools’ landing pages.”
The new websites are set to launch on September 20, 2023, approximately eight years after the current website was rolled out.
