Schools website expanded to provide better content in clearer manner
By Chris Donahue
Staff Writer
Principals, teachers, students and parents now have a revised Internet resource to find information about everything from the diocese’s curriculum to the Home School Association.
More than a year of work was put into improving the Schools web site www.diometuchen.org/cso/index.html, which can also be accessed from the diocese’s homepage.
The revised was designed by Kyra Dosch-Klemer, diocesan webmaster, in conjunction with the staff of the Catholic Schools Office.
The web site was introduced during the Pastors and Principals Meeting held in the St. John Neumann Pastoral Center, Piscataway, Dec. 6, by Joanne Ward, director of the diocesan Office of Communications and Public Relations.
The new Welcome page includes a mission statement, names of the Office of the Schools administrators, information about the advantages of a Catholic school education, and What’s New? and Website of the Month sites. What’s New? provides information about upcoming events like Catholic Schools Week 2005, and academic or athletic honors schools have earned, while Website of the Month honors the school with the best web site. The first selection was the web site of Bishop George Ahr High School, Edison.
The diocese will also provide technical advice for schools that don’t have web sites or ideas to improve existing sites, Dosch-Klemer said.
Other pages are designed for principals, which includes forms and surveys in PDF format; teachers, parents, students, curriculum and links.
The parents page also has information about New Jersey Catholic Schools Alliance, their brochures and newsletter, as well as legislative alerts. The students page includes articles published in The Catholic Spirit, the diocesan newspaper.
The links page now offers about twice as many sites as the previous one did, Ward said. Subjects include the arts, government, history, religion, sciences, social studies, maps, colleges and universities, newspapers and libraries.
The page also offers specific sites for students who need help with homework such as The Yuckiest Site on the Internet, Virtual Solar System, How Stuff Works, Roget’s Thesaurus and Webster’s Dictionary.
Filippini Sister Mary Louise Shulas, principal of St. Augustine of Canterbury School, said she plans to use the web site and will recommend it to parents as well.“It’s very attractive and inviting. It has plenty of links for everyone,” said Sister Mary Louise, who is included in a picture with some of her students on the Welcome page.
Jackie Kraus, principal of Our Lady of Victories, Sayreville, said the web site also is visually appealing and is easy to navigate,“When I saw it, the first thing I thought was, ‘We have to show it at the next Home School Association meeting.’ It answers so many questions and it’s a good tool for marketing.
“It also has great links for students. Very often they ask, ‘Where would I find that information?’”
Charity Sister Sheila Conley, assistant superintendent of schools, said the new web site can also be a great marketing tool because it’s a resource for families who wish to evaluate the quality of a school.
*The attached/referenced article was originally published in The Catholic Spirit, the official newspaper of the Diocese of Metuchen, and is protected under U.S. and international copyright law