Webfestival 2008 and CARNet CMS for Schools

For the ninth time, Webfestival accompanied the CARNet Users' Conference, by presenting a competition whose goal was to promote quality web contents on Croatian language, and to provide an opportunity to authors publishing their contents on the web to present their achievements. 

In an attempt to raise the awareness of schools and their users of the need for publication and use of their own web sites, Webfestival 2008 dealt with school web sites designed with the use of CARNet CMS, a system developed and designed specifically for schools, which enables simple web site designing and updating.

Under the slogan "One – Two – Three – Web!", the goal of the competition was to encourage schools to launch meaningful and useful web sites on which the students, the teachers and the parents would be able to access tools and services adapted to their needs.

The competition included all schools which launched a website with CARNet CMS before the end of the competition. The websites were appraised in two rounds by a professional and independent panel of judges who selected 91 schools, out of the total of 450, for the second round. Based on four criteria – information, CMS potential utilization, innovation and general impression, the panel pronounced the winners of this year's competition: Matija Gubec Elementary School from Cernik, The 2nd High School from Osijek, and The 3rd Elementary School in Čakovec.
It was also possible to appraise the school websites via online public voting, which favoured the website created by The 2nd Elementary School from Čakovec.

The winners received their awards on the Webfestival at the CUC Conference. A part of the programme was dedicated to a group of eight teachers from primary and secondary schools all over Croatia, who voluntarily and without remuneration tested the system in various phases of its development, providing feedback and directly contributing to the improvement of the school CMS.

As part of promotional activities, the Webfestival 2008 was accompanied by a number of preliminary workshops about CARNet CMS for schools, intended for teachers interested in design and maintenance of their schools' web sites. The workshops were held on several occasions in Zagreb, Osijek, Split, Zadar and Rijeka, with one workshop held at CUC 2008.