Head Start Programs and World Wide Web

I hope I can convince you that building a Web site for your local program is neither difficult nor expensive, and that it is a wonderful way to collaborate with the entire Head Start community and to promote Head Start nationwide.

From Modest Beginnings...
Head Start of Lane County's first Web site, offering little more than basic information about both Head Start nationally and our local program, was hosted at no cost by Eugene Freenet, our local Internet service provider (ISP). The site was developed in a few days, hand coded in HTML, the "language" of the Web, with WordPerfect 5.1 for MS-DOS, and posted with little or no fanfare. Within a few weeks, the site was included in the Lycos, Yahoo!, and the other search engines, and we began to receive visitors and electronic mail from outside our organization. Over the next year we updated and modestly expanded the site, but it never grew beyond a few dozen documents and a collection of links.

Then late in the 1996-1997 program year, we decided to establish a full-time connection to the Internet and to shift to an Internet-standard electronic mail system. This move allowed us to dramatically expand our Web site. We envisioned a site that could be a resource to both Head Start families and Head Start staff, and could grow to include much, if not all, of the information the organization provides to staff and to children and families.

Content for the site is created with Netscape Composer (available for free as part of Netscape Communicator 4) or with Microsoft Word 97 or one of the other applications in the Microsoft Office 97 suite. Some pages – including our home page – are still hand coded (or at least hand corrected). We have recently received donations of Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Acrobat from Gifts in Kind International and look forward to using them to improve the site.

Last year we redesigned our Web site, hoping to make it easier to use and maintain. After much discussion, we chose to integrate some recent technologies, using frames, JavaScript, and purchasing a $99 Java navigation applet (an abbreviated application of pre-formatted Web software). Both our staff and visitors were generally pleased with the new site, but after many people reported problems with the applet, we removed it.

We have also developed a Web "portal" for Head Start of Lane County staff and volunteers. This portal is the "home page" for our staff. It includes program information and updates, newsletters, calendars, meeting minutes, forms, links to useful information both on our own Web site and elsewhere on the Internet, and a Web-based interface to staff Internet e-mail and several databases. With a few clicks, staff can post news and calendar items directly to the portal, where they can be viewed by everyone in the organization.

Policy
The most difficult aspect of building our Web site was not technical, but political. Once we decided to expand the site to include a wide variety of information, the question became, "What information is appropriate to include, and what is not appropriate for general distribution on the Web?" Although the Web site enjoys the support of our executive director, crafting a policy that addresses the concerns of leadership and our board of directors while not unnecessarily restricting the development of the site has been, and continues to be, a challenge. Our goal has been to create a policy that permits an open exchange of information between Head Start staff and volunteers, parents, and the public while guaranteeing that nothing published on the site reflects poorly on either the organization or the national Head Start program.

The current policy, the fifth draft of which is now in use, outlines the process by which documents are prepared and approved for publication on the Web site. It defines topics that either are prohibited or require permission from leadership or the individuals involved. In brief, it allows the executive director to delegate daily responsibility for the Web site to a "Webmaster" (think "postmaster") responsible to her and to the board of directors. No material may be posted on the Web site except by the Webmaster. The Webmaster reviews all material before it is posted and is responsible for ensuring that no material deemed inappropriate by the Web site policy (e. g., political or copyrighted materials, confidential information) is posted to the Web site.

The Webmaster also works with the Web Site Design Team, composed of interested staff members and parents, to develop the overall appearance and structure of the Web site. The group, working with others in the organization, also finds or develops the content of the site, subject to the Web site policy.

Benefits Head Start of Lane County originally developed its Web site to help us to communicate better with our staff, volunteers, families, and community. And we believe that it has. Several years ago, for example, we revised and updated our Policy and Procedure Manual and, instead of creating paper manuals, posted it on our Web site. This allowed us to index and cross-reference each policy not only to all other related policies and work plans, but also to the relevant Program Performance Standards. All of this information is available at the click of a button! Since then, we have posted everything from Policy Council by-laws to job openings and descriptions to community resources.

We have also found that the Web site can be a powerful tool for collaboration within the larger Head Start community. By working together and sharing what we can, each Head Start program can better focus on those aspects of its community that most need attention. Head Start programs should be willing, even eager, to work together, seeing one another not as competitors but as collaborators and teammates in a common project. It is our duty not only to help our program succeed, but to help every Head Start program serve the children and families in its area. Everything that one Head Start program produces – every policy, every presentation, every handout and every manual – can be made available to any other Head Start program, or to anyone else who might be interested, through a Web site.

Another important benefit of a Web site is the education it provides to the general public about Head Start. In the five years that our organization has offered a Web site in one form or another we have received dozens of e-mail messages from people – students, parents, and the curious – from across the country, asking for more information about something that they read on our site. Thousands and thousands more have simply visited the site.

Recommendations for Building Your Own Web Site

1. 1. Start Small. If you or your organization has an Internet connection, your Internet Service Provider (ISP) almost certainly offers space for a small Web site at no additional cost. Ask how to use it.
2. Use the tools you already have. While outstanding tools for creating and maintaining Web sites have become available in the past few years, you don't need them. Software that is either already installed on your computer or available for free through the Internet is more than good enough. If you use Microsoft Internet Explorer, try FrontPage Express. If you use Netscape Communicator, try Composer. Or try the "Save as HTML" option under "File" in Microsoft Word 97 and most other recent word processors. Once saved in HTML, the document is ready to be posted on the Web.
3. Collaborate. Work with others inside your organization, in your community and, using the Internet, across the nation. If any of your staff members have made their own Web sites, ask them to help. Consider working with other non-profit organizations in your area. One may be willing to help you develop or maintain a Web site in return for your help in some other area. Commercial Web site design firms may be willing to donate their expertise. Likewise, local college students – and maybe even high school students – may have expertise to contribute. And other Head Start programs should certainly be willing to help.

• Head Start and the Internet, which familiarizes program administrators and other leadership staff with some of the possibilities and pitfalls of an Internet-based network, and provides computer support staff with a sort of road map to implementing such a network.
• Connecting People, which explores how the Head Start community could use the Internet to improve collaboration – both inside and outside each program – as well as some of the issues raised by these technologies.
• Computer and Network Information, which provides detailed information about Head Start of Lane County's computer and network systems, as well as our future plans.

There are, of course, hundreds of books and thousands of Internet resources on this subject available today. These are just two examples:

A Beginner's Guide to HTML http://archive.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html. This is a primer for
producing documents in HTML. The guide is intended to be an introduction to using HTML and creating files for the Web. Links are provided to additional information.

An Interactive Tutorial for Beginners http://www.davesite.com/
Webstation/html. This tutorial is for those who are serious about learning HTML, so they can have their own home page and maybe eventually their own Web site. It is not for HTML experts, but they might have fun and learn something new anyway! You need not have any prior experience in HTML, but it assumes you know how to do basic things with your computer, such as word processing.

Additional resources are listed on p. 23 in the Resources section of this Bulletin.