Horndean Technology College Compared to K nole Academy

1. Horndean Technology College Compared to Knole Academy VS Click here to visit the HTC website Click here to visit the Knole Academy website

2. COMPARISON OF WEB SITES

3. OVERVIEW Shows it’s a School In The Name HTC Horndean’s web page is very bright. It clearly shows that it is a school / college. A couple of subjects are shown by pictures. Happy students can be seen via slide shows. The site has been made by a school website design company. Drama Happy Students Happy Students Made For School

4. OVERVIEW Not a school Knole Academy The web site for Knole Academy, doesn’t actually look like a school / college, more like a dance academy. In the 4 pictures, only 2 out of 6 people are wearing school uniform and there isn't one clue that they are learning. Also at the bottom left of the page it says, ‘Academy website designed by Cleverbox’: and Cleverbox is a company so really, it is promoting Cleverbox and not the school. Dance academy No uniform Cleverbox

5. Does everything work? HTC Not all of the buttons work such as video. It is unclear when you press these buttons what they do or they don’t seem to work. Some of the functions do not work on some computers such as Apple’s imac, ipad, iphone and iPod. There is no function of the Horndean calendar on the front screen all it does is tell you what day it is. On the SLG section of the website some of the navigation buttons are not named therefore it is unclear what they do, and most of them require flash player to be installed first, which is not available on many Apple devices. Knole academy The search engine will only find specific details, for example I tried looking for parent letters and nothing came up

6. HOW EASY TO USE ARE THE SITES The Horndean website is broken up into sections for easier access, visually it shows every day items on the front page. The sections are clear on what they are trying to promote; also you can find things quite easily, if you click on a subject and open another subject there is normally a search engine to look through the website and 80% of the time it comes up with what you want. The Knole website is not particularly user friendly, it is difficult to navigate around and find what you are looking for. The high visibility function seems to lock your computer into that mode with no obvious way of returning back to normal display.

7. Similarities They both are big and bright. They both try to show the type of school that they are: Horndean tries to show that it is technical and sporty, as well as providing links from the front page to student and parent information. The Knole Academy tries to show an arts, music and dance academy. Both websites show a rolling announcements section and both web pages have hyperlinks to the schools’ perspectives. Links to sub pages appear in the same places and the sub pages are quite plain. Each website contains contact, students and parents information.

8. Recommendations for the websites HTC needs to work on all types of computers. If cookies are used by the website designers, they need to have a cookie policy on the front page. The high visibility hyperlinks need to be larger for people with disabilities. The homework section needs to be more user friendly, it would be better to be able to search for an individual’s outstanding homework rather than by year or subject, thereby preventing missing an item! Knole academy needs to be less business like and more like a school on the way it looks (if I saw the website without being told it was a school I wouldn’t think it was). Both web sites should have text reading options for people that find it difficult to read. The next slide shows my idea of how a website front page should look, it would be more interactive, fun and user friendly.

9. Horndean Technolegy College Not sure where something is do a site search