Given the details of this case study, I do believe that Lenora’s best choice would be to create her own website. Although Lenora has not created her own website before, there are now quite a number of user friendly web design sites such as weebly.com that would meet her needs and would not require her to actually know anything about programming or coding ‘behind the scenes.’ If she has access to the internet (even dial-up), then she also has access to countless self-help sites that have both written and video tutorials that can be used to walk novice website creators, such as Lenora, through the basic platform features. She may also be able to receive support from colleagues who have experience in this area. Her unfamiliarity should not deter her from trying to create a website of her own.
If Lenora’s intention is to create this website as a professional development anti-bullying resource for band teachers, then she needs to select a means of delivering this professional development content that will be timely and far reaching; a website would enable her to meet both of these criteria. One of the incredibly valuable aspects of using a website to deliver her content is that if managed well, the information shared can be kept completely up to date and thus, very relevant for practicing teachers. If Lenora were to pursue a delivery method such as a video/DVD option for her professional development plans, her information could quickly become out of date and be both costly and time consuming to update. Although the website will initially take her quite some time to establish, once completed, it can be maintained and kept up to date without putting too many time constraints on Lenora.
Lenora’s dial up restrictions may pose a bit of an obstacle for her especially since she does not want to spend a great deal of extra time developing her resource at school where the internet is much more efficient. If Lenora is willing to put in at least some time at home working on her anti-bullying resource, she could always use her time at home to complete the text portions of her website content using a word processor (no internet required) and then take her prepared information via laptop, memory stick etc. with her to school and do her uploading and actual site construction where she has access to better internet service. One would like to think that if this was a district supported initiative, Lenora could apply for some funding or release time that would allow her to free up some of her work day at school for the development of her anti-bullying resource.
If Lenora were to create her own website, she could also work in partnership with the Cradleboard teaching project (http://www.cradleboard.org/main.html). Once her website was in working order, she could connect up with the ‘Teacher’s Circle’ on the Cradleboard site and have them place a link to her own website on an appropriate page, so that any interested educators could access her resource. By incorporating a blog element, which is easily set up on sites such as weebly.com, she can initiate discourse among the Aboriginal educators and encourage them to share their own stories, strategies for dealing with bullying, as well as their own success stories with anti-bullying initiatives. Through the website platform, Lenora will be able to further develop a learning community with a common goal.
As Lenora has virtually no experience with creating a website, she will need to invest a few weeks familiarizing herself with the website platform she selects. If she uses her time wisely and takes advantage of the wealth of support online to aid her in becoming familiar with the design elements and how to incorporate them, she should be able to start loading her content, creating external links to relevant materials and reaching out to other educators in a time period of roughly 4 weeks. Having created a number of websites using weebly.com, which does a lot of the ‘work’ for you and has user friendly drag and drop style features, I believe that even a new user could have a workable website ready to launch in about a month.