eNews

May 27, 2020


eNews Zoom Demo

Great news for all sponsor-ed schools - you can trial eNews FREE for Term 2! eNews builds a contemporary newsletter from inside your website - it's a huge time saver.  On the back of our first three zoom's, we're hosting another to run you through a quick demo next Monday.

eNews Launch PD: Monday 1st June @ 11.30am (WA 9.30am)


Join Zoom Meeting
https://zoom.us/j/97883331933?pwd=bklsdDdyMXlYcHlFOGhkVmlXd3oyQT09

Meeting ID: 978 8333 1933
Password: 590735

Looking forward to seeing you on Monday.

Planning more online sessions

We've loved our zoom sessions of late, being able to see and work with over 100 schools just in the past fortnight!  We'd like to do this more often but we need your input. Below is a short form that you can fill out to let us know what you'd like to learn more about.  Please fill it out so that we can start offering sessions on topics that you want to know about.

Your school's product line up





 Old email

 eNews

 Free phone app

 None of the above



 Old email

 eNews

 Free phone app

 None of the above for now



 Yes

 No

 Not now





Uploading videos

Of late many of our schools have been uploading videos to their website.  These can range from virtual tours, fun messages for the community or actual lessons for the children.  Embedding videos on your site is quite simple when you know what to do. Take a look at our updated cheat sheets on videos here.
Uploading Videos using FUSE (Victorian Government Schools only)
Uploading Videos using YouTube

eNews Support Material

Firstly, we've extended the eNews trial - just let us know if you'd like to be setup. Have a play over the next six weeks; create a small test subscriber group with a few staff and parents and take eNews for a spin. It's so easy to create a beautiful, contemporary newsletter parents will love to read - looks fab on a mobile too.

To help you with your eNews trial and launch, we've created a video and cheat sheet that you can refer to when you are creating your first eNews.  There is also a set of images that you can download that are right-sized for your articles.  Click here for the support material.

And as an aside, you can see below that you can add video to your eNews. It's hard to do that with a PDF style newsletter.

eNews Demo V1 from The sponsor-ed Group on Vimeo.



Make them smile - build a bridge

The current environment has reactivated a thought I’ve had for some time about the use of humour in school communications. Simply put, it really doesn’t exist. COVID-19 has seen a rise in humorous content across society, from memes to song-word substitutions.

Have you heard the Sounds of Silence theme sung to “sneaking out in silence”?

From my own observations, humour is creeping into school comms in these challenging times. Teachers getting together (social distancing of course) to record their own song mash-ups, to parents submitting videos of humorous things the kids are up to during home-schooling. I can only guess the rise has been somewhat of an antidote for our growing anxieties.

Mark Twain said that " Humor is the great thing, the saving thing after all. The minute it crops up, all our hardnesses yield, all our irritations, and resentments flit away, and a sunny spirit takes their place”

Just prior to Easter, WA Premier Mark McGowen, signed a special eggs-emption assuring children that the Easter bunny was allowed to cross the border into WA. With COVID-19 having just landed and community fears running-high, the Premier’s humorous act did have us smile and for a moment de-stress.

Can a school principal be outwardly humorous, or has the position become so exacting that humour is seen as unprofessional? The premise I’m exploring is the use of humour as a bridge-builder to the community. Humour humanises us. 

I wrote some time ago that school communications were largely a public relations exercise, and if we take that a step further, the desired outcome being to build community. If we take Twain by his word, wouldn’t sprinkling “a sunny spirit’ be just the thing to bind us?

Perhaps next week, in your Principal’s message you can report on the truck incident down the road that saw thousands of copies of Roget's Thesaurus empty onto the roundabout. You observed that witnesses were stunned, startled, aghast, taken aback, stupefied, confused, shocked, astounded, amazed, confounded, astonished, overwhelmed, horrified, numbed, speechless and perplexed."

I think Mark Twain’s take on humour is worth exploring (studying, investigating……)

Regards

Denis Masseni
sponsor-ed Founder and Monash University Teaching Associate

 

 



Updat-ed has been Upgraded and it's free

We’re excited to announce that our school communication app called Updat-ed has been upgraded. The app has moved to a more robust, futureproof platform and will present some new features. To get access to the new Updat-ed app, please follow the instructions. 

FOR SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS
There's been a few minor changes to the website administration to accommodate the new app and forthcoming eNews. See instructions here.

FOR APP SUBSCRIBERS

1: Delete the current app from your device.

(Ignore step 1 if this is the first time you've downloaded Updat-ed, go to step 2)
Tap and hold the Updat-ed app's icon on your home screen until all your phone app icons begin to jiggle. Then, you can tap the small “x” on the upper corner of the app. You'll then be prompted with an option to delete the app and its data.


Android & iPhone

   

2: Go to the app store and search for Updat-ed by sponsor-ed (click on images to be redirected)



3: Once downloaded open the app on your device
. Select your school from the list and fill in the details. Please allow the prompt “Updat-ed would like to send notifications” so that you receive all alerts sent by your school.



You will now need to close the app completely. Swipe up on your phone to close apps on both Android and Apple devices.

The school will now approve your app subscription. Check back from time to time to see if your app has been approved.