For my column this year, I looked back at what I wrote last year about my future plans for Education World. I was pleased to note that we accomplished everything I predicted, and then some!
The most ambitious goal for Education World's growth in 1998 was the expansion of the already huge database of education resources contained in our search engine. The goal was to double our database of ~50,000 resources to 100,000 resources. We exceeded our efforts by expanding to over 110,000 resources. This made our search engine the largest and fastest of its kind on the Net. We also added special tools and software to continuously validate our links in order to deliver fewer "Not Found" errors when you click-through to Web resources from our search results.
Another goal of merit for 1998 was the re-introduction of Education World's employment listings. This fantastic resource (currently free), is, on average, home to over 500 individual résumés and 300 individual job listings from all over the country. The interface was also redesigned in November of this year, making searching for jobs or individual applicants easier than ever.
With all that we accomplished in 1998 it seems it would be difficult to come up with a list of "future plans" for Education World. Not true. Each year the entire staff of Education World - from our Web and Research staff in Hawaii; to our home office Management, Technical, and Creative staff in Oklahoma City; and our Editorial staff in Connecticut - meet in Oklahoma City for our annual Education World Summit. This is where goals and strategies are developed for the upcoming year. Each department member of our company has the opportunity to suggest changes, additions, and improvements that they feel would most benefit our users.
Education World will have many additions and changes in 1999. Here are a few of my more notable future plans for Education World:
- Home page redesign. Education World has evolved from "Where Educators Go To Learn" to "The Portal for Education." Excite, Lycos, Yahoo and others have established themselves as "general" portals for everything on the Net. Education World has become the portal for safe, quality, education resources. Education World has so much content and so many features it is difficult to effectively present all of them with the current design. A new design for our site is needed.
- Continued expansion of the Education Employment Listings feature. This section has grown to become one of the most-visited features on our site. In order to better manage the huge task of formatting and building pages for this section, I plan to have our development team fully automate the addition and removal of job listings and résumés through the development of advanced databases and submission forms. I would also like to expand the listings to include biweekly or monthly listings from national and regional education associations and organizations.
- Better interaction with our users. Education World accepts input from our users to help us grow and to provide feedback about the information that is important to them. One of the most important features we offer our users is the ability to submit their education Web sites and school Web site listings to be included in our database. Sometimes the process is confusing. In 1999 I want to make this even easier than before through simplified forms. I also want to provide e-mail feedback to our contributing users to alert them when their resource has been approved and added to our databases.
- More original content. Education World has expanded over the last two years to provide several new original content areas providing our readers with the best in lesson plans, book reviews, and curriculum - all interwoven with Web-based resources. Through our continued sponsor support we will begin to offer new original content areas. The newest one on the drawing board is our "Technology in the Classroom" area.
- Faster Access. We have made great strides in making Education World's search engine and category browsing as fast as the other big portal sites on the Net. But there is always room for improvement. I plan to work hard in 1999 to ensure the quickest access to our users for every part of our vast Web site. This may include more bandwidth (T-1 lines), faster database and Web servers, and better-designed content.
In 1998 we accomplished nearly all of the strategies we set out to accomplish in our start-of-year planning sessions. In 1999 I can pledge that we will continue our dedication to the education community and continue to over-deliver on quality education content and resources.
Sincerely,
Jon Koerber
VP, Director of Development
Education World®
