Schools and educator websites are traditionally geared toward providing students and educators with topical information about school programs, classes, calendars and homework resources. But with dwindling school budgets and social media trends, some schools are looking for additional ways to create community and improve fundraising options. Local search is one way that education websites can give their constituents another reason to frequent their websites and opportunities to partner with local businesses for sponsorships.

Local search increases routine visits and revenue for schools

Educational institutions possess both the trust and contact information of an extremely valuable commodity: residents of local communities. This is where the “real users” are – the people looking for local products and services on a daily basis. In addition, the majority of residents within the local area have broadband connectivity” the faster the connection, the more routine web searching, research and purchasing becomes. Couple this with findings that 92 percent of local searches convert to sales later offline, and it is easy to see why these real local users constitute the audience that marketers crave – and why local search advertising is growing so quickly.

WeAreNetwork - family-friendly local search

WeAreNetwork, a local search network, powers Educated Search’s local search results. The human-edited, child-safe local directories feature about 140 of the most popular local search categories, from accountants to dentists, children’s stores to worship locations.

With the family-friendly search environment that WeAreNetwork provides, Educated Search clients can rest easy, knowing that the businesses their students & parents are viewing are appropriate for school-age children and are sound businesses serving their local communities.

Educational search + local search = best solution for students, parents, schools

Educated Search’s custom-designed search engine for the benefit of schools, students, parents and the local community. Educated Search builds user-friendly search software that protects children from improper online content while giving schools the ability to create their own search content, directing students to the online research outlets that suit the current curriculum. Additionally, local business information can be added to the engine to create a local portal for students, parents and area residents. In this local search” section of the school’s website, sponsorships and advertisements can be placed which are relevant to students and parents and will promote revenue for the school.

In a recent study conducted by MTV, Microsoft and Nickelodeon, it was found that children use digital technology as a tool for communicating with their friends, expressing themselves and to be entertained, but technology in and of itself is not something that they particularly care to learn about. The technology itself isn’t the reason they own cell phones, computers and video games, but it is used as a way to enable them to communicate with their friends, whether online through IM programs, email, and social networking sites or text messaging them through their cell phones.

According to Colleen Fahey Rush, Executive Vice President of Research for MTV Networks, “Technology is adopted and adapted in different ways in different parts of the world — and that depends as much on local culture as on the technology itself.”

In Japan, children normally do not own a computer until they enter college, while in China fewer young people use mobile devices. Whereas globally, the average young person that utilizes digital technology has 94 phone numbers in their cell phone, 78 people on their messenger buddy list and about 86 people in their social networking community.

A frequent online activity for over half of the children studied was social networks. 35% of kids are claiming they use these sites because their friends are on them. While there have been amazing advances in communication technology, children use the technology not to the exclusion of spending time with their friends but to enhance the face-to-face interaction.

Students used to have to take classes to learn how to use computers, but that is no longer the case. A wide variety of classes are now using technology programs to help their children succeed in the classrooms. The programs are used for creating posters and instructional guides or used in art class to create self-portraits. There are also library programs and many music programs, to help stimulate the learning process for more than just computer classrooms.

Technology in schools is a way to engage the chidlren in more ways than just having them read information. It is stimulating an environment that will help them remember the information they are learning while providing remote access while students are at home. Schools are moving toward helping their studetns share information online with teachers and other students which will provide a more interactive environment for the students.

Teachers and parents are using collaborative technology to grant parents access to grades, homework assignments and absences. As technology advances, different and varied classes will find programs and opportunities to utilize the most cutting-edge program to benefit children’s education. Technology will continue to improve teacher productivity and student learning with the increase in new technology and software.

Rand McNally, in a bid to spark children’s imaginations, has created an online service to engage children in geography content and interactive games and activity. It will also provide teachers with skill-based lesson plans and assessments.

Joel Minister, chief cartographer of Rand McNally said, “With so much information on the Internet it is important that teachers know their material is coming from a reliable source. Rand McNally Classroom provides teachers with the comprehensive, interactive data they need from a name they know and trust.”

A benefit of the program is that because it is offered through a user name and password setup, the students can access the information at home to help them with their homework. The program also offers an interactive area where the students can be exposed to hands-on projects like place-the-states puzzle, continent quizzes and building their own map. There is also an area on the site that will help with the difficult to answer questions; this is “Ask the Experts”. It is an area where teachers, students and entire classes can receive answers to questions from the Rand McNally’s Geographic Information Services and editorial departments.

Geography is a core academic subject under the No Child Left Behind Act and this is a program that will help administrators, teachers, and students receive the information they need to succeed within a safe and entertaining environment.

In an article written by Julia Silverman, Oregon schools are looking at adopting a cyberbullying policy. Instead of children bullying other children at school, more are turning toward the Internet to bully their fellow classmates through social media websites. Cyberbullying is defined as the use of any electronic communication device to harass, intimidate or bully.

People are questioning whether schools have jurisdiction over what kids post while they are home. Currently the bill that is being proposed states that in order for the school to step in, the destructive posts would have to be conducted “on or immediately adjacent to school grounds, at any school-sponosored activity, on school-provided transportation or at any official school bus stop.”

The challenge school officials will have is verifying exactly who is behind the site, who posted the comments or pictures and where the person was at when the information was uploaded before any disciplinary action is proposed. Without proper evidence and legislation backing up the institutions, school boards could find themselves dealing with expensive legal disputes.

Teachers are using blogging as a way for children as young as kindergarteners to keep a daily journal. By providing a real audience to children, blogging is touted as inspiring children to quickly improve their writing skills and increase how often they write. In classrooms where the children are too young to write, students draw their entries instead,  and then narrate their entries for teachers to transcribe or consolidate thoughts from the class into one entry.

But considering the transparency of blogs, it is paramount that the children’s safety be of utmost importance when children are allowed online in whatever capacity. The need for their safety outweighs the emergence of critical skills through blogging. Teachers should have the final say of what goes online so that they can edit out any identifying information before it is released to the public. Various types of software can ensure identity protection for the students, involving teachers in the final review process before publishing to the Web. Examples of this hierarchal control include Blogmeister, KidzLog and Think.com. Blogging can be a great resource for teachers to inspire their children to write and create stories and news articles, but it should always be tempered with safety in mind.

When you think about a child getting ready to take a test, you think about them having to study, get a good night’s sleep and to eat a healthy breakfast. But did candy ever enter the preparation picture? It did for one principal.

In a Washington Post article, Lori Aratani reported on Principal Charlotte Boucher, who ordered 3,600 peppermint candies for the students before they took the Maryland School Assessments in reading and math. Why the rush for mint-flavored sugar? It is believed that peppermint candies will improve test performance. Boucher’s motivations came from search engines: “Millions of sites claimed that peppermints were the perfect midpoint snack for things like testing.” Scientific evidence wasn’t provided to back up the claim but Boucher decided to give the candy a try.

However, there is some truth to the mint story. During the 1990’s researchers at the University of Cincinnati found that a whiff of peppermint helped test subjects concentrate better and were able to perform their tasks better, especially tasks that required sustained concentration. William Dember, one of the researchers, said, “Not only do you get an improvement [in focus] with peppermint, you get a change in response that affects alertness in target detection,” he said.

A principal in Florida had similar success with placing orange slices on the air conditioners. The citrus scent helped to keep the students alert.

At Eastern Middle School, Boucher said, “If anything, they’ll have sweet breath, and if it provides a little boost…” A couple of the students at Eastern are doubters. Alex Sorto, 11 stated, “I just want to say, I don’t htink [peppermint] makes you smarter, but it clears your mind and makes you feel more confident.” While Binetou Koite, 12, said “I don’t think the peppermints helped, I think the teachers just told us that to make us feel more comfortable.”

Educators seeking to improve average test scores are using search engines to identify easily incorporated ways to help their students. If you can make a student feel more confident or comfortable about a test, that is half the battle. Even if natural brain stimulants like peppermint and citrus do nothing else besides provide a boost of energy or confidence to children during the stress of testing, it is a strategy that might be worth trying to give them a successful edge.

Exposure to online pornography is hampering children’s access to legitimate sites on the Internet. Forty-two percent of chidlren between the ages of 10 to 17 who utilize the Internet have been exposed to pornography in the last year. Sixty-six pecent of those users didn’t want to view the pictures and hadn’t tried to find pornography on the Internet.

By exposing our children to pornography at a younger age could lead them to become sexually active sooner or it could put them at risk of becoming a victim of a child predator. These aspects need to be taken into account when parents allow their children access to the Internet. While there is filtering and blocking software available for parents to reduce the expose to their children it is not 100 percent effective. The best deterrent to children being exposed to pornography is parental involvement. If the parents monitor what the children access on the Internet, the risk of exposure is less.

While our children are being exposed to pornography on the Internt, it would be beneficial to not only to the children but the parents involved, if there were programs available for parents to learn the safeguards to keep their children away from exposure. Not every program is full proof, but the easiest and most cost effective way to minimize exposure is for parents to take an active role in what their children are doing online. When you allow children to have computers in their rooms, then parents should be proactive in examining what their children are getting exposed to - whether by their choice or against their free will.

Pornography takes away our children’s innocence and it isn’t something that can ever be returned to them. Parental involvement will deter the children who are looking for it and help the children who don’t seek it. It is up to the parents and educators to keep an eye on what our children are exposed to - that is the only way to keep them safe from the exposure of pornography.

How do you create ongoing buzz about your company and speak directly to your buyers? The answer is press releases. The online environment provides an ideal canvas for distributing the news that your customers and prospects need to know about you.  And you don’t necessarily need a PR agency to write or distribute them for you. Online distribution outlets such as PRWeb, allow any size business to create and maintain an active press release campaign with little cost. Online press releases can give you more exposure with little cost and can drive quality traffic to your site. As a communication strategy, it is important to distribute releases on a regular basis to help keep your company in the front view of your consumers.

Random content won’t do though: you’ll need to set down some guidelines for your campaign. These include what you are going to include in your press releases, how you are going to create brand awareness and how you are going to get and maintain quality exposure for your company. Online press releases aren’t a license to be self-serving in your message; the content needs to be news-worthy first and foremost.  Focus on the customer, write about the benefits they’ll receive because of your new product development or how your latest partnership will yield them a better/faster/cheaper experience. PRWeb’s guidelines provide an excellent mental checklist as you develop copy. David Meerman Scott’s “New Rules of PR”  ebook is a must-read for anyone delving into the online press distribution space. You’ll understand how to write to your audience, what outlets to use and how to strategize a release schedule for consistent exposure. 

Some of the items you need to include in your press releases are the same things you need to include on your website, which include links and keywords. When you are constructing your campaign your goal is to create in-bound links to your site. You manage this through creating a press release that is rich in keywords that relate to your site, but you want to be careful to not over saturate your press release. Incorporating a good balance of two to three keywords is optimal, with a primary keyword and two secondary keywords. It is essential to research your keyword selections to make sure your keywords are geared toward your target audience and subject matter.

Brand awareness is important when working on your press release. You can optimize your press releases by utilizing media portals such as PRWeb and Internet News Bureau. Both websites will help you syndicate your press release to thousands of news outlets. It is imperative to include back links to a relevant landing page as it will provide valuable traffic to your site. 

As always, when creating any type of content for your site, whether it is press releases, blogs, articles or general product information, it is important to maintain a consistent voice and strategy in order to maximize the potential for long-term exposure for your business. If you provide great content with optimization you should be able to yield good results for your press release campaign.

The way that students are learning is changing. They aren’t tied to their desks or even to a classroom any longer. According to a study released recently by the Sloan Consortium, almost two-thirds of U.S. school districts had one or more students enrolled in online courses during the 2005 - 2006 school year, with over 20% planning to introduce students to them in the next three years. An alternative to online courses is blended courses - a combination of online courses and face-to-face instruction with a teacher. Districts believe that students taking blended courses will grow by almost 23% over the next two years.

The benefits to online and blended learning are that the school districts are able to provide classes that they wouldn’t normally be able to offer. Special courses - such as advanced and remedial - suddenly become available to students without previous access to these courses. Some students are also able to enroll in dual credit college courses with allows them to receive college credit for the courses they are taking online with their high school. Online learning also provides an opportunity to students who have failed a class to retake the class without being held behind in their grade. In school districts with growing population trends yet now enough funds for new schools, the addition of online classes provides an option for some students, freeing up seats for classroom-bound students.

Some of the issues dealing with online courses are concerns for the quality of the course, development and cost of the course and the need for teacher training. School districts have to work on improving their technological infrastructure to be able to handle the influx of students accessing their intranets.

Connectivity infrastructure is one area that requires forethought: if Internet services are spotty or overloaded, students might not be able to access their online test at a critical time. Securing a backup Internet service is an important step for schools launching into e-learning. They will also have to work with the policies that have been put into place by federal, state and local laws: not all students are able to take online courses. They need to have discipline to be able to succeed in online courses versus face-to-face courses.

Clearly, with a child’s future at stake, school districts need to make sure that online and blended courses are comparable in educational value to the courses they offer within the school. Their teachers and parents need to fully accept the presence of online and blended courses and support it - not doing so can make it difficult for the children to delve in with their full attention and succeed.

Online schooling serves a vital role in allowing students not only the flexibility in their schedules but also the large array of courses that are at their disposal. E-learning is playing a significant role in meeting the needs of school districts and students for rural and poorly funded communities and districts that would like to focus on the individual students instead of the whole student body. Those schools that enter this space will be able to provide a well-rounded education for the students to help them achieve their golas in education and life.