Ilike the idea and you got me thinking how it could work for us but my biggest concern is how to keep it from it becoming a gossip/complaint (you all know the word I really need here) session.
How much are you working with the school on this?
Around here it probably wouldn't work to well, BUT my NTSO has a discussion forum through "bravenet" and has also started a Yahoo Chat Group. To my knowledge no one has chatted yet but we do have several posts going (thanks to yours truly and her million questions), I fixed it where it would not automatically email me on both of those boards. I did have someone to IM me and that was fun. It is my first and I LOVE it. I am not sure how much it costs but if you have several parents with internet access (we don't) I think it would be well worth it, with some ground rules laid out (you know act like adults and respect other's opinions).
I use Yahoo for the school website, it is free but I cannot do it well because of my limited knowledge of computers. I've been trying forever to link other pages to it. :confused:
I belong to a number of these Yahoo groups. For some limited purposes, this may be ok, but it depends; generally I've found they tend to fill up with a lot of crap before too long if there's not a good moderator.
We are trying something with it with our group this year--we've set up a Yahoo group for just our room parents to use. So, for example, if someone wants to have a holiday party in their classroom where they decorate gingerbread houses, and they've never done it before, they can post a message to the group and get some help. It's meant to be an idea exchange/support group for the room parents. Our room parent coordinator will moderate it to make sure it doesn't turn into something else. It will be interesting to see how it goes.
We actually started forums with ezboards last year and made a link off the school's webpage. We had a chat room available and forums for used uniforms, school announcements, alumni, questions about the school, and one teacher even posted her homework assignments every week on the board.
We paid for the fees by making a link off the school webpage to amazon.com. Commissions we earned on book sales were minimal, but enough to pay subscription fees (under $50 a year, if I remember right).
Unfortunately, the boards didn't get a whole lot of use in their first year...people who aren't used to going online aren't apt to be looking for a discussion board!
I called it the wrong thing. It's an email group. You post to the page. Then it's forwarded to everyone who has signed up for email notices. They can opt out of receiving email and just check the site.
I like the idea of a chat room, but the downside is that people have to be online at the same time.
Of course you could hold scheduled chats, but the time would have to be convienient for people.
I like mailing lists better and established one for our website. Yahoo and a handful of other places will give you them for free. I actually chose google groups as I found it the most idiot proof. But, it is a great way to stay connected and send out reminders, or look for last minute volunteers.
