More ways to communicate

Still more ways of communicating with prospective and current students and parents

                Because so many of our prospective students use Facebook, St. Bernard has a Facebook page at

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Uncasville-CT/Saint-Bernard-School/60005107447.

A Facebook page is a great place for photos and videos that help prospective – and current – students and parents learn more about our school.    People who wouldn’t search out our school website might be more likely to look us up on Facebook.

If you have such materials that could be added, please forward these to Molly Murkett at mmurkett@saint-bernard.com.  You don’t need a Facebook account to do this.

(By the way, you’ll need to look at the school’s Facebook page at home, as Facebook is blocked at school.) 

Since our students are so often on Facebook, if you are a faculty advisor for a club, activity, or event, you might want to consider using Facebook to promote participation.  According to Molly, “As of 4/26/09 there are 160 fans of the Saint Bernard School page. Fans receive updates and messages that are an additional reminder for upcoming events and activities.”

Even if Facebook is outside your comfort zone, if you email the materials to Molly, she can add your information to the St. Bernard page.  Molly is available at x131.

There is also a Saints blog you can follow or contribute to (again at home) at http://sbsambassadors.blogspot.com/   Again, contact Molly for more information.

Blogging

I am exploring blogging as another means of communications with my fellow teachers.  Rather than having to post documents on my website every time I create a new email about how to do something with computers, I am starting to use a blog.

                I’ll email the information to you, with a link to the blog.  Happily, blogs automatically keep all the previous posts right there, where you can browse through them.  There is even a search function, so you can enter keywords like “excel,” for example, to find all articles about Excel.  This is much less work for me, and it allowing me to explore using a blog at the same time.

                I certainly agree that some blogs are little better than personal diaries, and of little interest to many, but many bloggers provide useful – even critical – information.  I get some of my best information about technology and education from blogs.  I started with a list of blogs from a book I was reading, found a few I liked, and then found other blogs linked to these blogs.  There are now about 8 that I follow all the time relating to education and technology.  I don’t read every word, but often find material that’s useful.  Most can be sent to my email automatically, so the amount of work for me is very small.  Many professional organizations have blogs associated with them, and these are easy to subscribe to.  Try your professional organization’s homepage and search on “blog.”  Not everything will be of interest, but it’s worth exploring.

                If you want to get started with your own blog, please let me know, and I’ll help you get started.  I taught myself how to do it this summer, and it is surprisingly simple.