My stable of sites for the Australian Council of State School Organisations continues to grow.
To complement the existing main ACSSO site, the Families Matter site, the Values in Education site and the Languages Education site, I’ve just completed Ensemble, focusing on Music Education in Australia.
These sites come out of ACSSO’s approach to identifying issues important to parents of children in the public education system, establishing working relationships with organisations that focus on those issues and then developing internet-based facilities to explore the issues and provide systemic advocacy.
That can include purpose-specific websites, email newsletters, chat rooms, messageboards, polls, photo galleries, blogs or anything that will help promote discussion and contribute to positive change.
Naturally, ACSSO also does an enormous amount of work offline, producing publications, managing projects, lobbying various levels of government, representing Australian public education parents at national and international events and holding its annual conference, where many of the players in the development of policy and practice come together to shape the future of public education in Australia.
I’ve been very fortunate to work with ACSSO on all of its online activities over the past four years and thus to be in a position where as an out-of-house independent web designer I can come to a deep enough understanding of ACSSO’s needs, aims, preferred methodologies, budgetary limitations and other factors to become a truly valued member of the team moving the organisation forward.
That’s a rare feeling for a freelancer, and a very satisying one, more especially because the work is of such value to the community.