Mr Oakden first set up this site in October 1999.He was a class teacher and therefore all the work was produced in his spare time. It has developed a great deal since it has been in existence, as his knowledge has grew. The staff are particularly proud that all the input for the site has come from within the school and has not been undertaken by college students or outside agencies. However, the most exciting part is the children's input to the site. The children submit work for publication on the site. The children produce articles for the school's online newspaper. This creates a real enthusiasm within the children and also builds very useful skills. A new area of the site that is beginning to take shape are the interactive activities which are planned to expand.

We hope that looking at this site will encourage other schools who do not have a site to have a go at their own as it is not as difficult as you would imagine. The site was initially built using Microsoft Frontpage Express. This program comes free with Microsoft Internet Explorer and is simple to use.Mr Oakden taught himself how to use it, mainly with the use of an 'idiots guide' book, magazine articles and quite a lot of trial and error.

He then changed to using the full version of Frontpage 2000 which gave more options to improve the look of the  site. You will find that it is fairly simple to design good looking websites with Microsoft Publisher, Word or Powerpoint that comes supplied with most new school machines. 

He was producing new material for the site using Macromedia Flash MX, which is taking the website in exciting new directions. All of the new pages are created completely with flash as he prefered the flexibility and the visual layout. It allows much more interactivity such as the items that can be found in the fun activities area and also lots of cool looking animations. The best part about this program is that the children can produce high quality webpages and animations for publication on the web.

Currently the site is being managed by one of our parents Stephen Pattinson BSc.(Hons) IT and Comp.

Click here to learn about the net and web building

	Friarswood Primary School, Abbots Way,  Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire. ST5 2ES
	Telephone 01782 297345 Fax: 01782 297486

Contact us at: webmaster@friarswood.org.uk