Having worked as a consultant for most of my career, I haven’t been on the ground in an organisation to see products/services launch very often. Obviously this can be a good and bad thing – and is one of the benefits/frustrations of the consulting life. But that’s not the subject of today’s post, so I’ll leave that for another day.
But fortune has it that I’m back working at the NSW Department of Education and Training just in time to see the project that took up all of my 2008 launch.
The School Website Service launched a couple of weeks ago and is available to all public schools in NSW. The service enables schools to create and maintain their own school website using an easy-to-use editing and management environment that is more ATM than the usual content management system cockpit.
It is an optional service and so far over 200 schools have gone live using the service, at a rate of around 30 sites per day. Of which Laurieton Public School and Glenquarry Public School are my personal favourites.
What’s most satisfying is that two weeks into the project zero issues have been reported to do with the usability of the service. A testament to the project’s user centred design process and extensive efforts and dedication of those involved in the project.
It is great to seewhat the schools are using the service for. Seeing schools quickly and easily publishing fairly inane features on things such as volcano sculptures even brought a tear to this cynical farts eyes!
The service is only available under limited release at the moment, but once the schools have access to the full range of tools we’ve designed, these sites are going to go off in all sorts of wonderful and crazy directions. I am looking forward to keeping an eye on these sites.
