State of Sagamore online, fall 2013

On 2013-08-20 at 8:30p, Monica Ellingson, John Lenz, Dave Barker, and Peter Helander, held a recorded video conference to discuss the state of Sagamore Hills online efforts. Here are the meeting's notes.

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Intro

These notes are regarding a video conference of parents of Sagamore Hills Elementary School discussing the state of Sagamore online. The video conference will be/was recorded August 20, 2013, 8:30pm. Anyone may edit this document up-to and during the video conference.

Resources

https://plus.google.com/events/c1q7onbh0gmctr4bt7jb1mtgjoc

Where this event is coordinated. Allows inviting, rsvp’ing, entering the video conference, watching the video conference live or later, and commenting.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GyNhkoE1AhHrtMgBRIw9RZ8SWQMZ_jHK1lqvAk8Gzfg/edit

Moved to http://www.9.0ne.org/w/State_of_Sagamore_online,_fall_2013 2013-08-21

These notes, editable by anyone before and during the video conference.

http://list.9.0ne.org/list/listinfo/sagamore.online

An email discussion list where most discussion should happen.

http://www.9.0ne.org/w/Sagamore_Hills_online

A general repository of knowledge anyone can edit.

Agenda

A rough outline of what we’d like to cover during the video conference. Feel free to add items you’d like covered.

Introductory material

Quick explanation of why we’re here (Dave)

“Welcome to the State of Sagamore Online. It’s 8:30pm, Tuesday, August 20, 2013. We’re parents with children at Sagamore HIlls Elementary School in DeKalb County, Georgia. We’re not the school, we’re not the PTA (yet ☺)—we’re just parents looking to help. We’re here to talk about how the Sagamore community currently communicates online, why, and ideas for the future.”

Short introduction of participants (Dave, Peter, John, …?)

E.g. “I’m Dave Barker. I have a first grader at Sagamore and this is our second year there. I’m a stay at home dad, like to harness the power of technology, and am excited to work on improving online communications at Sagamore.”

“Why this video conference” story (Dave)

“PTA second-year co-president Kim Speece introduced me to Peter—who being an online communications professional and first year Sagamore parent—wanted to talk to me about improvements that could be made in the way Sagamore communicates online. Instead of having that conversation then and there, we decided it’d be best if we had our initial discussion in a recorded video conference, so others could easily join and later refer. Getting each other up to speed would surely produce insights of interest to others—and that’s why we’re here!“

Existing offerings

District site (John)

http://www.dekalb.k12.ga.us/sagamore

• Hosted by DeKalb County Schools and their tech
• Gatekeepers: Principal Martin and ?
• Managed by John Lenz
• Dreamweaver → static upload (?)

PTA site (Dave if no one else)

http://sagamorehillspta.org/

Wordpress, hosted by Dreamhost, needs needs love, managed by PTA, admin keys held by Dave & ?

Parents site (Dave)

http://9.0ne.org/

See: http://www.9.0ne.org/w/Project:About

Ideas

Peter

Here just some initial suggestions

• An email full of ideas
• Put a new RESPONSIVE them on old site, so it shows well on ALL screen sizes, with a navigation that has drop down menus to minimize the space the navigation takes form the pages. Now it is about 30% or so navigation.
• Solicit feedback
  • Add short survey button on side of site - very good to find out what PEOPLE REALLY WANT from the website/ on the website
  • ACTIVELY solicit feedback from parents not only on main website, but also in emails and more.
• FAQ lists, separated on categories, then alpha-sorted

I did a Sagamore information inventory 2013 that could be handy as input. --Dave (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2013 (EDT)

• Media
  • Videos!

I've established a Sagamore Hills PTA Google account that we could lean on. --Dave (talk) 16:18, 21 August 2013 (EDT)

• • More photos, photo-sharing, so all can upload or only webmasters
• Integrate with select social media, of which Youtube.com, pinterest.com and Facebook might be good
• Put BASIC SEO on the site so it shows in Google when people search
• Increase the PTA dues and make the PTA dues a “product” on the coming ecommerce/shopping cart page
• Put a shopping cart page to sell branded Sagamore products but also tickets and fees for various events and activities
• “Experiences” page, where parents can showcase their experience with the school
• Write a page, blog post about 10 things that was hard to find out and how to find them about/when enrolling a new student at Sagamore
• A tag cloud on the first page witht the core values for Sagamore Hills Elementary, can be done at www.wordle.net or other sites.
• Sell SPONSORED SPACE on the website, emails and all other “communication materials/marketing collaterals” that goes out
• Highlight how parents can “easily help contribute buy buying from Sagamore Partners” such as Georga Gas, use the OneCause button and more.

Notes

• New cms screws up branding.
• Monica said there’s a suggestion that the pta website should be folded into the school site?
• Branded email out because of DeKalb County works.
• Sagamore is fair compared to other area websites.
• There was an existing suggestion to fold the content from the pta site into the well branded sagamore site.
• Peter suggested doing a user survey to see what parent really want from a site. webengage.com
• [thinking of reviewing the video and translatin to notes]