ABOUT EGAN'S NEW WEBSITE
Please note: This site is best viewed with Firefox and Safari browsers, which are the more web standards-compliant browsers than Internet Explorer. You can download Firefox and Safari browsers (both available for PCs and Macs) for a better viewing experience.
The Story behind Egan 2.0, launched on October 2, 2007
Even though Egan 2.0 does not have many of Web 2.0's social networking characteristics, such as blogging and wikis, it is however, a wonderful example of Web 2.0's spirit of collaboration, cutting-edge web services, multiple content contributors and most of all a strong sense of "community" shared by Egan's admin, teachers, students, parent volunteers and LASD's District Technologist.
Vision and Technology at Egan
Egan 2.0 would not have happened without the vision and support of Principal Brenda Dyckman, who has provided a fertile landscape for Egan's community to explore and implement new technologies. It is on this platform that Egan's innovative teachers first experimented with creating their own html webpages on Egan 1.0's well-designed website and also to use web services such as TeacherWeb, eBoard, web.mac and Google pages to build their own websites to enrich their curriculum, share critical class information and to enhance students' learning. What is noteworthy is that these teachers learned on their own time to find new solutions to fulfil their web needs.
Another key implementation in recent years was Powerschool, the web-based application used by teachers to update student's progress. Students and parents alike have come to rely on this web-based tool to keep track of their student's work and progress on a daily basis.
Furthermore, in alignment with the rapid growth in web usage, so have Egan's web needs rapidly expanded and evolved. One evidence is in the continuation of Egan's Green Theme, where paper distribution of thick documents to families are being phased out and instead the content is posted to the web for online viewing or download. One major paper document to be eliminated this year was the Egan Handbook that was normally mailed to every family as part of Back-To-School packet. This was a decision that saved over 10,000 pages of paper!
Another significant change is in the elimination of the monthly LEIF Newsletter that was mailed home to every family once a month. This is replaced by the more timely, frequent and contemporary email solution called "Brenda's Back Channel", a new e-mail newsletter sent to the parent community with links to content on Egan's website. This is done on a weekly basis and is also used to announce important news. This email list-serv capability was recently enabled by LASD's District Technologist Jackie Sigua, which has opened a new door to how LASD schools can communicate with parents.
Cutting Edge implementations
This brings us to one of the most exciting and cutting-edge implementation of new technologies at Egan School, which is the use of Google Calendars for teachers to post their class assignments and shedule, for administrators to share school events on the Parent-Community/Egan School Calendar and enabling students to subscribe to multiple teachers' calendars and other Egan School and Athletics Calendars, all within a secured Egan School Domain that protects students' identity and privacy. Egan Staff and Teachers worked hard over the summer to fully rollout this new sharing web service to lift the level of communication and organization for the whole Egan Community to an unprecedented level. And the ability to embed the public calendars on Egan 2.0 to be easily shared with the wider Parent Community is truly cutting-edge. We may see glitches here and there in the embedded Agenda mode, but the automated update of upcoming calendar events is undeniably useful, effective and unmatched by anything out there at this time. Furthermore, in the spirit of Web 2.0's "Perpetual Beta Test" mode, the Google Calendar Team is currently working with us to fix the glitches that exist to make Google Calendar a better product for the wider web community. Egan 2.0 proudly contributes to Web 2.0's collective intelligence!
Egan's changing Web needs
In this scenario, the role of Egan's website has gone from a low frequency of information dessimination to a quick turnaround of posting important and timely school, class and community news. It has also become an important hub for linking and pointing to the different web services and applications that the Egan Community has come to rely upon on a daily basis.
Egan 2.0's Design considerations
So it was with the above purpose in mind that Egan 2.0 was conceived, designed and implemented. The highest priority was to design a fluid architecture that would expand and contract based on the rapid change in education, technology and communication needs at Egan. Another consideration was to keep the website simple to maintain in light of the tradeoff of having a fluid architecture and one that is maintained by a volunteer Egan WebMaster. In hopes to accomplish these goals, Egan 2.0 was designed and implemented in compliance with the latest Web Standards using XHTML and CSS and using a bare minimum of rich elements like Flash photo slideshow and video players (coming soon) to keep the complexity down but still to enrich the user experience.
But what fun is it to have a cutting-edge functional website without a brand new look and feel? The design factors were limited by privacy concerns in using recognizable images of students. So how does one design an interesting middle school website within such limitations? For starters, in the spirit of Egan Vikings, the main color theme used is Egan's Blue and Gold, with splashes of white, green and orange for emphasis and fun. After much research, Egan 2.0's design was influenced by the well-regarded Designer Elliot Jay Stocks based in London, England, who is truly innovative in his look and feel, and whose work is much admired by this designer.
For Egan 2.0, I've created original design elements that came out of a need to allow users to quickly find the information they need. One of these design elements is the "Dual" Home page/Index concept of having a main home page showing recent news and welcome message that co-exist with a full Egan Index page (not site map!) that work in "toggle" show/hide modes.
The prominance of an Egan Index page is important because most of the families at Egan are only here for 2 short years. Too short to go hunting for information! Other original design elements are the use of flexible floating transparent palettes for an added visual perspective and at the same time to brand Egan school by showing campus shots in an interesting way. The transparent effect is best viewed with FireFox and Safari Browsers which support transparency png images. Internet Explorer PC users can download the Firefox and Safari browsers which are both available for the PC.
Egan 2.0 would not have achieved the look and feel without the beautiful photos of Egan School Campus taken by Sheri Blaisdell, Egan's current PTA President. These images are used throughout Egan 2.0's website as the background image, on the top navigation bar and in the homepage photo slideshow. And the cherry on top? Egan now has its own "Favicon" in the URL address bar with a miniaturized Egan Viking. Look out for this new "Egan Viking" 
in your browser's URL input bar!
Thanks to key contributors
Finally, Egan 2.0 would not have been completed without the significant contributions by these people:
Mrs. Dyckman, Egan's Principal, whose vision in adopting new technologies for Egan is the key to all the above, but in particular for Egan 2.0. It is due to her shared vision, support and direct contribution to the architecture, site requirements, content and a generous allowance to what the designer can do that has allowed Egan 2.0 to be created.
Sheri Blaisdell, Egan PTA President 2007-08 and parent volunteer. Besides her Egan photos, Sheri embraced the vision and supported Egan 2.0 from inception. She helped with the site architecture, content contribution, gave important insights on Egan 2.0's functionality and mobilized all her PTA chairs to help move Egan 2.0 along. On her own time (which I can't see where she finds it) Sheri has tested and assured that Egan 2.0's content is accurate and meaningful. Many thanks to Sheri's dedication and unselfish efforts in all that she does for Egan to help make it a much better place for the whole community!
Carole Costa, Egan's Webmaster and parent volunteer. Carole's competence, efficiency and can-do attitude is what helped seal the deal for Egan 2.0. Carole's positive attitude and enthusiasm to take on whatever came her way made Egan 2.0 a pleasure to create. Besides her many contributions to Egan 2.0, Carole also simultaneously maintained Egan 1.0 since summer. Carole will be the key person to maintain Egan 2.0 after launch. She deserves a big round of applause!
Mr. McClain. A big thanks to Egan's Counselor for taking the time to find new enriching and useful contents for Egan students and parents. This is an exciting new area for Egan's website, where Student's wellbeing is addressed! Other useful information includes Student Enrichment opportunities. This is a wonderful chance to learn more on how to better guide and support our middle schoolers.
Kris and Elisabeth, Egan's Office Admin, for giving key insights to what parents need to find out from the website. Their frontline work in Egan's office gives them unparalleled view of what students and parents want to know and need to know, which translated directly to how the information is organized on the website. Kris is also doing extra work to update the Egan Google School Calendar as seen on the home and calendar pages. Many thanks Kris for proactively alerting me to information I should put on the website! Also thanks to Ginger, Egan's librarian, for providing content to the new Egan Library webpage.
The Teacher community! Thank you for all your gracious support and for taking time to fill out the Egan 2.0 survey just before school ended which provided an important perspective to where the need is and will be in the near future. Carole and I look forward to support you as you further explore how best to use Egan 2.0 or new web services for your classroom needs. In particular, many thanks to Ms. Clawson, Mrs. Wiacek, Mr. Smith and Mr. Brand, Egan Teachers, for spending time to sit down and share with me your experiences in how educators are addressing their web needs and Mr. Schneider for his positive support and innovative ways to share classroom information on his website. I have learned much from all of you. And to Ms. Cullimore for her enthusiasm in Egan 2.0's potential use of school activity photos on the homepage slideshow and Mrs. Whalen for her consideration on how to incorporate Yearbook photos to be included on Egan 2.0 in the future.
Thanks to all the PTA Chairs/parent volunteers for your Egan 2.0 survey responses and content contributions, especially thanks to Trinka Dyer, Claire Rigodanzo, Karen Janowski, for the feedback, support and suggestions on Egan 2.0's information organization to publicity stickers and banners. And thanks to all the new and exciting content contributors from Parent Ed, Highway to Highschool, Magazine Drive and everything else under PTA!
Helen Wong, previous Egan WebMaster and parent volunteer, who has provided important insight to what worked and didn't work for Egan 1.0 and for her contribution to Egan 2.0's requirements.
Mary Gospe, parent volunteer, for helping create, prepare and analyze Egan 2.0 surveys that went to all teachers and all the PTA Chairpersons as well as some incoming 6th grade parents. This information was critical to the architecture of Egan 2.0.
And thanks to Jackie Sigua, LASD's District Technologist for helping us setup everything on the LASD's server to enable a smooth transition.
Finally, thanks to all future content contributors to Egan 2.0. It is through our collective efforts that will make Egan 2.0 a useful website. My apologies if I have missed anyone. It has been a tremendous team effort. My heartfelt gratitude for making Egan 2.0 a reality. It was truly an Egan Community effort!
It was my pleasure to serve,
Mary Rye
Egan 2.0 Designer/Programmer/parent volunteer
October 2, 2007
(Please contact me if you have any questions, concerns or thoughts).