Flagler County (Fla.) Public Schools: www.flaglerschools.com.

Flagler County (Fla.) Public Schools: www.flaglerschools.com. SERVING MORE THAN 12,500 PRE-kindergarten through grade 12students, the Flagler County (Fla.) School District is located onFlorida's east coast, in one of the top five fastest growingcounties in the United States United States,officially United States of America, republic (2005 est. pop. 295,734,000), 3,539,227 sq mi (9,166,598 sq km), North America. The United States is the world's third largest country in population and the fourth largest country in area. . Design An uncluttered design that calls the eye to content of interestmakes this site welcoming. The home page offers useful and actionable Giving sufficient legal grounds for a lawsuit; giving rise to a Cause of Action.An act, event, or occurrence is said to be actionable when there are legal grounds for basing a lawsuit on it. content related to district news, as well as links of particularinterest (including a district calendar and district policies, andschool board members and policy). There is a featured information areaat top center (at the time of this review, it was a story on thedistrict's recent "straight A report card"). It would bevery helpful, however, if the sections on the home page were clearlylabeled for what they are, such as "District News,""Feature Story," "Links of Interest," and so on. Each of the district's school sites uses a similar overalldesign framework, and the content selections are alike (though they varyin depth and breadth and presentation from school to school), allowingfor a generally consistent experience. There is a clearly labeled"Home" (to the left on most site pages in the top navigationbar A set of buttons or graphic images typically in a row or column used as a central point that link you to major topic sections on a Web site. If the navigation bar is a single graphic image with multiple selections, it is known as an imagemap. See imagemap. ) and "District Home" (at bottom right of most pages).However, the district logo, which also appears at the top leftthroughout, is not linked back to the home page. Navigation The top and bottom navigation bars are consistent across the site,and include links to in-demand sections such as "Schools,""Community," "Parents/ Students" and"Staff." In the bottom bar, the individual links for"Parents" and "Students" were not operational;apparently there were once separate content sections, but these havesince been combined. Many of the site sections have a left-handnavigation box with section-specific links called out. Some of the linklabels could be made clearer by expanding them. For example, the link tothe "Exceptional Student Education" department is tersely terse?adj. ters��er, ters��estBrief and to the point; effectively concise: a terse one-word answer.[Latin tersus, past participle of listed as "ESE ESEabbr.east-southeastNoun 1. ESE - the compass point midway between east and southeasteast southeast ." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Unfortunately, there is no search functionality offered on thesite, other than the very simple and limited "Staff E-mailSearch," which was not operating properly at the time of thisreview. Also, there is no site map; making one available would aid inoverall site browsing See browse. , in addition to finding particular content. Usability How easy something is to use. Both software and Web sites can be tested for usability. Considering how difficult applications are to use and Web sites are to navigate, one would wish that more designers took this seriously. See user interface and usability lab. Although there is no 'About Our District" page offered,the street address and phone number for the main district office arereadily available atop all of the main site's pages. Eachindividual school site and section offers this same contact information,as well as school-specific athletic programs content. Other very usefulinformation about the district and its programs is scattered ScatteredUsed for listed equity securities. Unconcentrated buy or sell interest. throughoutthe main site and could benefit from being directly accessible via amore prominently placed gathering of such links, bypassing the need tohunt through drop-down navigation menus. This district site is not optimized for access by disabled users. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] School-to-Home Interaction The "Parents/Students" section on the main district sitehas a respectable array of content, ranging from supplementaleducational services to the gifted students support program (a separateWeb site) to registration and school safety information. There is anextensive, districtwide "Parent Resource Guide" in PDF file See PDF. format, and a substantial listing of other Web sites of general parentalinterest. At the time of this review, the links to "StudentHandbooks" for individual schools in the district were notoperational from the "Parents/Students" section (but they wereaccessible, when provided, from individual school sites, usually withinthe "Parents/Students" sections). In addition, a comprehensivestaff directory could not be located on the main district site; thenarrow "Staff E-mail Search," as noted earlier, was notfunctioning. Several of the individual school sites offer"Parents/Students" content sections with a selection ofparticularly pertinent and timely information, such as school supplylists, upcoming field trip details and fundraising "Contributions" redirects here. For information about the Wikipedia user contributions log, see . Fundraising activity updates. Use of Online Technology A "District News" RSS feed Summaries of Web site content that are published in the RSS format for download. See RSS. (also referred to as a blog blog,short for web log, an online, regularly updated journal or newsletter that is readily accessible to the general public by virtue of being posted on a website. )subscription is offered. In "Podcast Central," severalpodcasts covering school news developments can be found. A handful ofthe schools in the district publish newsletters (in Adobe PDF fileformat). Access to an intranet portal and an e-mail login Signing in and gaining access to a network server, Web server or other computer system. The process (the noun) is a "login" or "logon," while the act of doing it (the verb) is to "log in" or to "log on. are providedfor district administrators, teachers and staff. Up-to-Date Information The content on this site appears to be kept up-to-date. Althoughthe welcome message from the superintendent is dated in February of thisyear, there is really no reason for this kind of introductory communiqueto be date-stamped at all. The district news offered throughout the main district site (andvia the RSS feed) is timely and relevant. Many of the individual schoolsites do a particularly thorough job of presenting content tailored tokeep parents and students informed. DA Laura R. Bona is a freelance contributor to DISTRICTADMINISTRATION. To nominate nom��i��nate?tr.v. nom��i��nat��ed, nom��i��nat��ing, nom��i��nates1. To propose by name as a candidate, especially for election.2. To designate or appoint to an office, responsibility, or honor. your district for a site review, contactJudy Hartnett at jharmett@districtadministration.com. Rate your favorite new products atwww.DistrictAdministration.com/products Read Kurt O. Dyrli'sProduct Posts at blogs.districtadministration.com/ productsblog Kurt O.Dyrli is products editor (kydyrli@districtadministration.com)