This thesis deals with the issue of primary school websites and the potentials of their usage by students and teachers. Recently, websites became very common means of communication and educational platform. The aim of the thesis is to determine the potentials and limits of using websites in primary education. The thesis is divided into three main chapters and it has four appendices. The introductory chapter introduces the aims and the concept of the thesis. The part dedicated to the current state of the problem describes the development of Internet usage by children in the Czech Republic and other countries. This chapter deals with statistic data from the survey carried by the Czech Statistical Office and from a National Educational Institute project Škola21, in which the leaderships of various schools answered questions about the ways of using the school website as a part of self-evaluation. In this chapter, there is also a division of the target groups of school web users, short overview that demonstrates the development of school website in the last ten years, and a description of the parts that it, in some cases, contains. Special part is dedicated to evaluation tools of school website and other resources that can help determine the criteria of a high quality website and thus its potentials and limits. The second chapter, which is the main part of the thesis, is a research of school website and Internet usage in general by students and teachers and presents the basic research questions that were being answered. The main research question that is later divided into sub-questions is "How do students and pedagogical employees use the Internet and school website?" The main tool for collecting the answers were questionnaires designed according to a pre-research. The questionnaires collected the answers about the usage of the school website from students and teachers. The answers are statistically elaborated and the results are being compared by classification of fist and second degree. Here, the ways of students' and teachers' work with the website are compared and relations that can designate the potentials of the school website are looked for. The answers were further compared according to the respondents' school location, frequency of the school website visits, Internet access and other criteria. The results of the research were further discussed in interviews with groups of students and teachers. These interviews were focused on discovering the reasons for the respondents' answers. The thesis summarizes the results of the research and puts them into context with previously published work on this topic. Using these findings, the third chapter defines and explains recommended content of a school website and thus, sets the basic limits and potentials of its usage. On the basis of the information from the overview of current studies on this topic and using the research data, the thesis suggests a school website evaluation tool, which can answer the question about how the potentials of a school website are utilized. Computational algorithms and procedures of creating the evaluation tool are described in the research part of the thesis as well as the results of its testing on two primary schools in the Czech Republic.

School websites are useful in providing an additional environment to educate and impart culture to the collectivity. They reflect the collective phenomenon of behaviour and traditional ideas, and at the same time, reflect the efforts made by the educators to teach cultural identity, values and social skills. The work of renowned anthropologist Geert Hofstede (1991) on cultural dimensions has contributed to the study and reassessment of current theories on software and websites, which interact with the cultures of societies in which they function, and are still relevant to the constant evolution of technology (communication tools) in the educational environment. The aim of this research is to explore how cultural dimensions are reflected on ORT school websites in Israel. This study in a relatively new field offers educators an insight into new options and innovations offered by school websites, and provides reflections on their use in cultural education. In this context, the importance of this research lies in its contribution to the pedagogical dialogue on culture, and as it is reflected on school websites. This study applies Hofstede's (1991) work, in which he classifies cultural characteristics prevalent in global organizations into five "cultural dimensions": power distance, individualism&collectivism, masculinity&femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and time orientation, and design expert Aaron Marcus' (2001) interpretation and application of this model to website designs worldwide. The subject of this study consists of 54 Ort school websites operating in Israel. The findings on ORT school websites echo Hofstede's characteristics on the reflection of power distance in Israeli culture. However, my findings on Hofstede's three other dimensions – collectivism vs. individualism, masculinity vs. femininity, and uncertainty avoidance – illustrate a more complex picture, with the elements reflected in differing patterns. ORT school websites reflect both elements of culture as defined by Marcus (2001) and elements of standardization of website design. In recent years, there has been an upsurge in the software available globally to create and design websites, all using the same basic tools and elements of design. In conclusion, schools' attempts to impart culture as part of their social education policies is reflected in the contents and design of their websites. / Dissertation (MEd (Curriculum Studies))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted