About Foothills
The Foothills School Division No. 38 manages the operations of over 20 K-12 schools in southern Alberta. The Foothills School Divisions vision is to support optimal learning through quality teaching, and in the integration of education and technology.
Issues With Old Site
- The Foothills School division's web site was extremely out of date and did not reflect their current identity, and values of integration of technology and education.
- Net scaffold platform that it was developed on was complicated to administer.
- Many broken links and irrelevant information on the site.
- Schools in the division either had no website, or the sites that were online were unfinished and each had an identity separate from the other.
- Cost associated with operating current site.
Clients Requirements
- New design that reflected the integration of learning and technology.
- Site needed to be easily administered by employees with various tech back grounds.
- Wanted 3 templates built so the other 18 + schools and educational facilities could choose one and create a website based on the template chosen.
- Set up and integration of SharePoint, log in pages for moodle, epearl and groupwise.
- Due to the budget restraints of the schools the Foothills School Division wanted the ability to utilize its in-house IT department in order to build the school sites.
- The division wanted a more clear way to show the division boundaries, and for users to easily find contact information for their ward trustee.
Web Candy Solutions
- Web Candy designed a new site with a fresh look that met the Foot Hills School Divisions requirement of conveying technology and educational integration.
- Web Candy developed the site on the Joomla platform and installed an easy to use editor.
- Web Candy created user manuals, and put on courses for the front end site administrators from the division office and for site administrators from the schools in the division.
- Web Candy created a manual for the IT staff and provided them with training on how to set up and administer the back end of Joomla so that they could create web sites for their schools.
- Web Candy integrated the web site with SharePoint, GroupWise, and the other programs used by the Foothills School Division.
- Web Candy studied the existing K-12 school websites and built templates with menu structures based on the commonalities found.
- Web Candy developed 2 division maps so that ward boundaries, and ward contact information was easily found + it added to the technology and education integration theme of the site.
End result
- Foothills School Division was able to cut costs of operating the division web site.
- Foothills School Division was able to build web sites for the schools in its division that had a consistent look and feel, but did not strain the schools already limited budgets.
- Information was made current, and site administrators had the necessary training to ensure that the site stayed current.
- The new site reflected the divisions integration of education and technology theme.
- Share Point was set up and configured, all files and documents were centralized in one spot for easy storage and access by all site administrators.
Sales Pitch
Web Candy has a very talented crew with a wide variety of skills and abilities. We can custom design web applications to give your site more functionality, add social media components to keep you in contact with your customers and potential customers, optimize your site so they show up in search engine queries, and a whole lot more. Contact Web Candy today and get your web site working for you.
