The students benefit by learning technical skills, as well as fairly complex research and design skills. June Million, director of public information of the National Association of Elementary School Principals, said with the newness of the medium not enough schools have set up guidelines for their sites, including when to update them. Other important issues include protections for students involved in activities or events posted on a Web page. But she said with training about the Web the positives outweigh the negatives. Useful information that a site could post include dates of school events, the background of the staff and messages about the school's mission.
People moving to a new area can also use the Web to scope out a new school.
But she noted that while it's good to look at a site, it's better to visit the school. Edudev SA has been started to help build an electronic community of individuals and organisations involved in community based training across South Africa. As its name implies, Edudev SA is a tool to support community development programmes, and is particularly focused on grassroots training organisations. Edudev SA is intended to be an informal, open forum for discussions on programme planning and delivery, education needs, research, expertise and other resources which may be shared among training programmes. International organisations which support or a re involved in community based training programmes in South Africa are also invited to participate.