Project Lead: Megan Camp

Contact Information: 802-985-8686

Objectives

The objective of this project was to develop a Web site that would promote place-based education through sharing stories, exemplars and facilitating dialogue with formal and non-formal educators, administrators, government agencies, and interested citizens. The organizations that are partners in this project can either move their place-based education pages onto the new site or, if they do not currently have a Web site, can create a new page on the Promise of Place Web site. In addition, the Web site is meant to advertise and document the bi-annual Promise of Place Conference.

Project management

After the selection of a project leader and an assistant, a team of people was contacted to identify what they would want in a POP Web site. The members of this team represented several place-based education groups in Vermont and New Hampshire, plus the Place-based Education Evaluation Collaborative research group. They developed a list of criteria through sharing favorite Web sites over the e-mail and met five times to develop a final listing of criteria to use to seek Web site designers. Although the final product includes majority of the elements identified by the project team, its design has been kept relatively simple because of unexpectedly high costs. The project team hopes to revisit the design in the future to move it closer to the type of Web site envisioned at the beginning of the project.

Technology:

The design of the Web site was contracted out to a private web-design company and the site itself is administered by a group of registered users, each of whom is responsible for a particular part of the site that corresponds to their own area of expertise. The Web site also has both public areas and private, password-only areas. This makes it possible for the POP Web site to function not only as a means of communicating with place-based education contributors from all over New England (and the world), but it also can function as a channel for internal communication as well (an Intranet).

Experience to Date:

The Web site was launched slightly behind schedule because of delays in hiring an IT Administrator for the Sherburne Farms. The decision to delay the decision about the Web site development company was informed by previous experience where a technology was purchased that was later not compatible with future IT plans of the organization. The training of all the project members is still underway.

Throughout the project they have realized the value of on-going communication and the difficulty of combining various objectives and goals of a large group into a common vision.

Advice to Others

“If someone else was to consider setting up a Web site with partners, I would advise them to become as familiar with Web sites, Web hosting, and working with non-profits as possible. A good resource is the Foundation Center—the tech-soup software for non-profits, and good advice on the differences between “for profit” and “non-profit” partners.”