Who is the audience? Who do you expect to view the site? Who is your main target?

Students

If students are your main audience, you need to be looking at their needs and requirements. Students will want information to support their assignments. They will want it quick and easy to find. They will need intuitive navigation with lots of points of access and plain language. Information will need to be targeted very closely to specific assignments.

Students want:

• Internet links to sites to assist completion of assignments
  
  
• general reference
  
  
• assignment outlines
  
  
• course outlines
  
  
• study and reference guides
  
  
• recreational sites
  
  
• ways of interacting with other students and also teachers




Staff

Information for staff needs to be targeted to their special needs. It needs to be accessible and very easy to use. Any material for staff has to be obviously of immediate benefit, either saving time or helping students.

Staff want:

• lesson plans
  
  
• rubrics
  
  
• webquest and online module outlines
  
  
• educational theory for study
  
  
• Internet links for background reading in their subject area

Parents

Parents are mostly concerned with knowing about and being able to assist in the education of their children.

Parents want:

• information on purposes, direction and values of the school
  
  
• newsletters about school happenings
  
  
• information about the education processes within the school
  
  
• study skills and research information
  
  
• methods of keeping in touch with the teachers and the school
  
  
• access to information of use to their children for assignment completion
  
  
• access to information for themselves

Prospective students and parents

Prospective users of the school are on a fact-finding mission trying to learn about the school.

They want:

• information about the values, vision and priorities of the school and how its practice matches with theory
  
  
• information about fees, uniforms
  
  
• information about opportunities for courses and extracurricular activities
  
  
• information about school culture, tone and spirit
  
  
• access to information for themselves

Local community members including other teachers and students

Community members are more varied. They will be interested in the same issues as the parents and prospective parents, without being intimately involved. They will value access to information for themselves. However, their needs are primarily for information about the school as it might impact on them.

They want information about:

• the kind of educational institution
  
  
• the calibre of student who will be active in the neighbourhood
  
  
• the kind of activities that will impinge on the area
  
  
• the contribution that the school will be likely to make to the community.

The wider community including other teachers and students

The community at large has a multitude of needs.

They want:

• information about the school in general, similar to what parents, prospective parents and local community members want
  
  
• access to information for themselves
  
  
• to assess how this school measures up to others like it in their own communities
  • in values and vision
  • in educational opportunities
  • in extracurricular activities
  • in tone and spirit

Keep in mind that all groups will possibly include people who will want to use links you provide for your own staff and students for their own information-seeking.

It might be that your website will be serving an amalgam of some or all of these groups. Nevertheless you have to decide who is most important for you. If the students are your main focus, you will create a different site than if a prospective parent is your main expected user. Choose which specific group of users will be the focus for your site.

You can't be all things to all people.

Remember The Parable of the Old Man, The Boy, and The Donkey

Activity: Audience

Make a list of the expected users and groups. Why have you chosen them? What will they be expecting? Of those things, what will you try to provide straight away? What would you like to add later?

Submit a draft of this now! Remember to write your journal and contribute to the Bulletin Board.