The new ETS website

By the time you've reached this blog post, I hope that you have found within the new ETS website everything that you were looking for, and maybe discovered something new along the way.  The site was designed with the users of our services in mind, giving you direct access to the information you need.  Over and above this goal, we would like to take the opportunity of your presence on our site to share our insights about educational technology in hopes that it will help you in your teaching and learning pursuits.  We also want to use the website to share the fascinating work in which ETS is involved, from our campus partnerships to our leadership within the educational technology community.

Having coordinated the ETS website redesign project, I've had the fabulous opportunity to get to know the staff of ETS and the work they do more intimately.  In every aspect, I have been inspired by the vision, the dedication and the talent found within this organization. I look forward to a continued relationship with each unit as we continue to grow the content of the website.

The website is - and will continue to be - a truly collaborative process. Many people have contributed their time and talents to bring this site together. I especially want to acknowledge a few of those individuals:

• The "Working Group" - Janet Kodish, Victor Edmonds, Eli Cochran, Angela White, Gina Gaiser, Ben Hubbard, Daniel Roselle - who put in countless hours negotiating a challenging site architecture and set of features that successfully (in my opinion) met a lofty set of goals;
• The "Steering Committee" - Mara Hancock, Lisa Rothrauff, Brenda Farmer, Oliver Heyer, Sandra Wasson and Janet, Eli and Victor (from above) - who supported and guided us with the vision and decisiveness of true leadership;
• Darlene Kawase, of the ETS Operations Unit, who quickly became a Drupal specialist and resolved many, many technical challenges for the site, including integrating CalNet authentication and Jira issue tracking with Drupal;
• Seamus Byrne, of Graphic Mint, who guided us through an inspiring and insightful process of rebranding our identity, leading to the new logo and site design - a masterpiece in my eyes;
• Eli Cochran for his CSS wizardry and visual design guidance;
• The many ETS staff who contributed content - especially Ezra Daly and Jim Richards, who ran the equivalent of a marathon entering all of the classrooms!

An ingenious design is nothing without content. This site was designed to allow those who know the subject matter best - the staff of ETS - to write it themselves. We felt this was not only the best approach for delivering the most relevant and meaningful content, but also gave the staff an opportunity to gain recognization for the work they do and to grow professionally. I look forward to continuing to work with the staff to develop more great content for the website.

I welcome any and all suggestions and comments about the website. Please feel free to contact me with your ideas, or add a comment to this post.