What is the Localbiz Community Website?
Students manage the content of a vibrant and active community website, that everyone in the community can use. The educational value of the project comes from the research, information gathering, publication and promotion of the website, providing real activities from which students produce real outputs, to the benefit of everyone living in the community.
The easy to use ready made website contains templates which allows the information to be published and
updated with no requirement for HTML skills.
The website is built around the key elements of the community life, including, Forthcoming Events, Local News and Business Advertising, with a built in search engine to help users find local businesses and organisations quickly and easily.
The project provides great opportunity for young people to contact new business start ups and home workers, learning about how they work and identifying local job prospects.
The goal is to help young people gain an insight into the workings of the local community and help prepare them for their career aspirations, or make smarter decisions on a course choice of further study at college or university.
Each year, as new students take over and introduce new ideas, the community website gets bigger and better. The Localbiz Team works closely with teachers and EBP’s to enhance and expand the project’s activities.
The Localbiz Project is an ongoing set of activities, and students can be involved on specific tasks over the course of a week or a term, even taking on sets of different tasks each year as they progress through the school. They can be involved in the handover process ‘inducting’ the community website’s management to a new student cohort. This new group can then decide their own aims and objectives, including making decisions on who is going to play what part e.g. Managing Director, News and Media Manager, Sports Reporters, Account Managers, Finance Director, Webmaster etc. and go on to make the site look even better.