SchoolPad: Free Websites for Schools

Signing up for SchoolPad is easy, administration is straightforward, and the templates have a focused layout with minimal AdSense — ideal for its target users.

Unlike the Department of Education’s (DepED) oh-so-many-requirements to getting an edu.ph domain name, you can conveniently get a http://YourSchool.SchoolPad.ph courtesy of SchoolPad. Your school or organization account is allotted a generous 25 mb — more than enough for the usual user. Even DepEd divisions use SchoolPad (e.g. DepED Misamis Oriental and DepED Bohol )

The dashboard (reminds me of Basecamp) has Pages, Calendar, Messages, Photos, and Files. Creating content is easy with the TinyMCE — just don’t go crazy with the fonts. Adding an event on the calendar is cut down to the basic info of event title and date — 3 out of 4 upcoming events were displayed on my homepage (which can look like any of these ready-made looks).

I love the shoutout function, or rather messages - which you can send to parents or even alumni to update them.

Spreading the word about SchoolPad and enabling its users to maximize their free school website definitely goes beyond online marketing. This brings up again the issue of the digital divide — there are hardly any textbooks in our public schools, how can you expect the benefits of computers/technology to touch the students who need them?

SchoolPad takes Philippine education one step closer to where it should be.

Why own a school website?

• Because you want to share the school’s philosophy, learning environment, and plans to everybody.
• Because you want to keep parents always informed of school activities and announcements.
• Because you want to share what your students learn and do in school.
• Because you want to establish a school that uses modern technology to strengthen the links between students, parents and teachers.

From SchoolPad

Nice-to-have features for the next update include:

• The homepage to look less link-farm-ish than it does now.
• option to use the school’s own top-level-domain name (TLD) — as straightforward as using tumblr on your dotcom
• search function to find a school and a more organized list of schools and organizations
• connect with alumni via Eskwela mashup… (oops, a mashup would require an API… so maybe some other kind of symbiotic linkup)
• simple upload of logo to a placeholder instead of a custom banner
• upgrade to no ads

SchoolPad is the brainchild of Greg Moreno’s Gaboogle Software — showing off Ruby on Rails!

A little bird told me about this site being sold off — true?? This platform could really do well for schools in other developing countries — and then maybe charge the richer schools.

Question to self: What happened to the services for schools to SMS announcements to parents back in 2006?