ContentsCreating and Maintaining the School Website and the Newsletter.............................................................1

Website...................................................................................................................................................1

Introduction.........................................................................................................................................2

Homepage...........................................................................................................................................3

Calendar..............................................................................................................................................3

Channels..............................................................................................................................................4

Sections...............................................................................................................................................5

Pages...................................................................................................................................................6

Newsletter...............................................................................................................................................8

Introduction.........................................................................................................................................8

Creating an Email in iContact...............................................................................................................9

Sending an Email in Mailchimp..........................................................................................................13

Adding Sent Emails to the Website....................................................................................................15

Creating a Printed Version of the Newsletter....................................................................................16

Tasks for each New School Year........................................................................................................16

Google Administration...........................................................................................................................22

Logging In to the Admin Console.......................................................................................................23

Managing User Accounts...................................................................................................................23

Forwarding from carlbmunckelementary.org User Accounts to ‘real’ Email Accounts......................24

Managing Groups..............................................................................................................................24

Creating and Maintaining the School Website and the Newsletter

WebsiteThe role of the webmaster is explained in the PTA job descriptions. It’s recommended that the person who maintains the website also manages the newsletter, or if that’s not possible, they should at least work closely together. The content on the website is passive; people have to choose to go there to find information. The newsletter on the other hand actively pushes content to the reader. But the content between the two is often the same and needs to be consistently updated on both the website and in the newsletter. Plus as you will see in this guide, there are instances where code has to be pasted from the newsletter tool over to the website, in order to publish the archived email newsletters.

IntroductionEvery OUSD school has the option to maintain a website using the Schoolwires infrastructure. We have chosen this route because it is free, and we can get support from OUSD technical staff. The direct URL for the Carl B Munck website is ousdes1.ousd.k12.ca.us/carlmunck. Since this is not easy to remember, we have registered the domain at www.carlbmunckelementary.org with GoDaddy, which automatically redirects to the OUSD site. We do not do any website maintenance at GoDaddy, it’s simply providing a redirect service, for an annual fee.

To maintain the website, go to our homepage, and hit Sign In:

If you don’t have the option to Sign In, you will first need to request an account through the OUSD technical staff.

Once signed in, hit Site Manager:

That takes you to the Schoolwires site editor. The initial page upon logging in is where you can modify the homepage (Overview), or the calendar.

HomepageClicking on the Overview takes you to the Subsite Workspace where you can change the blocks you see on the homepage:

For example, this is where you would change the photo gallery (section B), or change the Welcome message that is displayed in the center of the homepage (section E).

Click Carl B Munck Elementary at the top left to go back to the site level Overview and Calendar options.

CalendarThe Calendar option is where you would add, remove, or edit any upcoming events. You can either double click on a day to add an event, or hit the New Event button:

The text you add to the event description can be copied over to the monthly newsletter or vice versa:

ChannelsThe SITE & CHANNELS section on the left map to the headings you see at the top of our website. You should rarely need to change these:

SectionsEach channel will have one or more sections within it. For example, here are the sections under the Information channel:

And in Schoolwires, those same sections are listed when you click on the Information channel (only a partial screenshot below):

PagesIf you want to edit a page within a section, click on the section name. Each section can contain one or more pages. Here are those listed under the Supply List section:

The Overview page is what is displayed when you click on Supply List section under the Information channel:

Notice that there you see the other two active pages in the Supply List section as options on the left, the K-1 Supply List and the 2-5 Supply List. From the Section Workspace in the website editor, click on the page you wish to edit:

The options in the editor work like any editor you see in other tools. You can change the format, add bulleted lists, add links to other sites or pages, attach documents, embed images, and so on. As soon as you save your changes, they will be immediately reflected on the website.

Newsletter

IntroductionThere are several tools on the market today that help you to create and send a ‘pretty’ email, nicely formatted with links, graphics, side bars and so on. The tools are all fairly similar and provide the following main components:

Templates for you to create your email. An editor for you to build on that template and customize it. The editor makes it easy for you to

change fonts, embed images, add new blocks of text, perform spell check etc., without ever having to know how to do any HTML coding.

A campaign manager where you say to which list you want your email to be sent, and when. A list manager where you can add or remove people, check what emails are bouncing. A reports area where you can see how many people have opened your email, clicked links etc.

Most tools on the market offer a basic free subscription. This is sufficient for our needs. We use two tools to create the Munck Monthly newsletter. We originally started only with iContact, but found a lot of emails sent ended up in spam folders. So we switched to Mailchimp to actually do the sending, but because we had already drafted emails in the iContact editor, we still use that today. It’s very easy to move the completed newsletter from iContact to Mailchimp.

Creating an Email in iContactTo draft a new email, find the most recent draft, or a draft from the same month for last year, and choose the Copy action:

Having copied, you will be taken to the Create an Email Message page, where you can edit the content for the current month. Remember to change the email subject at the top.

Message StructureA MESSAGE is made up of SECTIONS, each SECTION contains BLOCKS, and each BLOCK can contain TEXT and IMAGES:

Clicking any one of the above icons will make the rest of the menu change. For example, clicking MESSAGE will give you message level options such as spell check, message preview. Clicking TEXT will allow you to change fonts, add bulleted lists etc.

The convention has been to put any general updates in blue in the top section, followed by date driven events in green in the section below. Any smaller updates or points to mention can be added as side bars on the left. In the top left corner are links to the date based events, which also service as a quick reference for upcoming events.

The main options we use at each level will be covered below in more detail.

Text Level Options

This is where most of the work is done. The editor is like many others, it allows you to change fonts, format, control text alignment, and add links. Click in the block you want to edit, then choose TEXT. Most options are pretty self explanatory, but here’s an extra word on how to create and link to anchors in the text:

AnchorsFor each green date based event, edit the anchors at the beginning of the event title by selecting (highlighting) the yellow anchor icon:

Having highlighted the anchor, click the Anchor icon in the Format menu:

Set the anchor name to roughly match the title of your event, with no spaces:

Then, up in the EVENTS AT A GLANCE section, highlight your event name and choose Insert Link:

Choose to link to an anchor in the text, and select your anchor name from the list:

This allows people to jump to that event description in the email by clicking on the link in the events list.

Image Options

Using the IMAGE option, you can upload images to the iContact library, and then embed them within your text. Once embedded, you can play around with wrapping to make the text wrap around your image, to save having lots of white space in your email. You can use a mix of left or right wrap so that the email looks more random.

Block Level Options

Mostly we don’t need to change anything at the block level either, since we just keep using the same template each month with consistent colors and spacing.

Section Level Options

We never need to change anything at the section level.

Message Level Options

ABC – Spell check your message. PREVIEW POPUP – Gives you a quick preview of how your email will look. TEST – Enter your email address to receive a test copy. Handy to make sure all looks OK, links

work and so on. SOURCE – This will generate the HTML code for you once you have finished creating your email.

You can simply copy it all, then paste it over to Mailchimp when you are ready to send.

Before wrapping up your email creation, remember to go to the end of the email editor, and copy the text from the rich text email content over to the plain text content by hitting the copy from above button. This is in case anyone chooses to receive email in plain text mode:

Sending an Email in Mailchimp

CampaignsTo send the email you have just created in iContact, you will need to create a Campaign in Mailchimp.

Choose the Create Campaign option and select this type:

Pick the list, then hit Next:

Enter the campaign name and email subject. Leave everything else with the default settings, then hit Next:

You don’t need to select a template since we’re not starting from scratch. Instead, choose Code Your Own, and after hitting Next, choose Paste in code:

Now you will have to pop back over to iContact, choose the MESSAGE option, and SOURCE:

Put your cursor in the box and hit CTRL-A (select all) followed by CTRL-C (copy). Then go back to Mailchimp, put your cursor in the HTML editor, and hit CTRL-V (paste). A preview will be automatically generated and displayed to the left of the HTML editor, but you can also use the Preview and Test menu at any time to see how your email will look. Once all looks OK, hit Next:

Check over that your email subject is correct, it’s being sent to the right list, then hit Send.

Adding Sent Emails to the WebsiteThe code is already embedded in the website to link over to Mailchimp. So all that is required to add an email to the website is to move it to the appropriate folder in Mailchimp. Pick Campaigns, select the message and choose the Move To option to move it to the folder for that school year:

Creating a Printed Version of the NewsletterIn addition to the email version, we have to release a printed version of the newsletter. There is no technology involved here. Simply copy / paste the entire email from your inbox, or from the website, and paste into Word. Fiddle with column sizes, add blank rows etc., until the content fits over the pages as you would want to see it printed.

Tasks for each New School YearAs we start each new school year, we need to do a few extra tasks:

Create a New Folder in MailchimpIn the Campaigns menu, under Folders, add a new folder, and edit it to name it to represent the new school year:

Any newsletters sent throughout the course of the school year can then be added to that folder.

Generate Code for the New FolderTo make the folder with all the past issues of the Munck Monthly show up on the website, you need to have Mailchimp generate some code for you, and paste that into a new page on the website. So first, find the folder you just created to hold the newsletters for the coming school year, then select Folder Archive Code:

In the Get Archive Code window, pick the folder you’ve just created:

Put your cursor in the window with the generated code snippet, and copy everything (CTRL-C).

Paste Code into a New Page on the WebsiteIn the website editor, go to the Munck Monthly section under the Information channel and hit New Page:

Page type, as with most pages, should be Flex Editor:

Enter a name for the page to match the new school year:

After saving and the page is created, open the page up in the editor and paste in the code that Mailchimp created for us, to show the archived newsletters from the folder we’d created for this school year. Be sure to select the HTML option at the bottom of the page editor, since we are directly pasting in HTML:

Sort the Pages ChronologicallyBy default, the page you created to hold the latest editions of the Munck Monthly will be listed at the end of the page list. You will need to organize the pages to list them chronologically. Go to the page list for the Munck Monthy section and hit Organize Pages:

Drag and drop and save the new page sequence. Check your results by refreshing / reloading your page on the website:

Upload New Email Addresses to the Mailchimp ListOnce you have email addresses for incoming families entered into the OUSD enrollment system, you can work with the OUSD technical support staff to extract these into a spreadsheet. You will probably be given several columns in that spreadsheet, names, grade, email addresses etc. To prepare that list for upload into Mailchimp, remove any header rows, and literally just have one simple column with all the email address listed.

In Mailchimp, under the Lists option, select the list into which you want to import, and under Add subscribers, choose the option Import subscribers, followed by the option Copy/Paste from Excel :

Copy the email addresses from your Excel list, and paste into the box:

When you hit Import List, Mailchimp will import only the new names it finds in the list and will leave alone any subscribers who are already in your list.

Google AdministrationGoogle Apps for Education is available for free to any public school. We have it set up for Carl B. Munck. We don’t use many features of it yet, but it could be expanded in the future. Currently we use it to:

Manage user accounts for each role at our school, for example: ptapresident@carlbmunckelementary.org (then in Gmail, we forward email from those user accounts to the ‘real’ email accounts of the PTA members)

Manage google groups so that anyone can email a group of people at one time, for example: dads@carlbmunckelementary.org, or roomreps@carlbmunckelementary.org.

Continuing to use Google Apps for Education is optional.

NOTE: If you do not choose to use it, you will need to publish alternative email addresses to the website and in the newsletter because nobody will be monitoring email sent to the carlbmunckelementary.org email addresses.

Advantages of using Google Apps for Education:

You can freely publish the carlbmunckelementary email address to the website, posters and so on, while the private ‘real’ email address of the volunteer remains protected from abuse / spam.

When PTA board members change from one year to the next, you don’t have to change website pages and newsletter templates that mention those email addresses. It’s easier to just change the email forwarding to the new member.

Google groups are handy for committees or groups to communicate with one another and make sure they are not missing anyone out. Groups managed by an admin via Google Apps for Education have more features than a regular Google group, or a Yahoo group. With a regular group, people can add themselves, or the group owner can invite them. One huge benefit with a Google group managed by an admin via Google Apps for Education is the admin can add people directly to a group, rather than wait for people to accept an invitation. So for example, if Dads have signed up on a paper list, or you want to email all PTA members, the admin can take that list and directly add them to the appropriate group, enabling you to rapidly reach of full set of members. Experience has shown that if you wait for people to add themselves to a group, it doesn’t happen and the list never becomes viable as a good way to communicate.

Although not currently implemented, you can also use groups to help with building community in the classroom. For example, you could set up groups each year in the format <year><teacher>@carlbmunckelementary.org, e.g. 2014robinson@carlbmunckelementary.org. The room rep or teacher can gather contact emails and add all parents to that group so that right at the start of the school year, you can reach the full set of families for that classroom.

Logging In to the Admin ConsoleThe admin console is where you manage your user accounts, and the google groups. To log in, go to the Google admin page and log in as the as the admin for the carlbmunckelementary.org domain, which is googleadmin@carlbmunckelementary.org.

Managing User AccountsYou can see the email addresses currently set up in the carlbmunckelementary.org domain by reviewing those listed in the PTA contacts page, or for a more complete list, go to Users from the admin console. Here are some examples of the user accounts currently set up:

ptapresident@carlbmunckelementary.org ptatreasurer@carlbmunckelementary.org ptasecretary@carlbmunckelementary.org

Your PTA members never need to actually use their carlbmunckelementary.org email accounts. They never need to log in and check email there, as long as forwarding has been set up correctly. Once forwarding has been set up, any email sent to the carlbmunckelementary.org email account will be automatically forwarded to their personal email account.

Forwarding from carlbmunckelementary.org User Accounts to ‘real’ Email AccountsWhen each new school year starts, you will need to log in to each gmail account in the carlbmunckelementary.org domain and set up forwarding to go to the private email addresses of the new PTA board / volunteers.

Once you know which ‘active’ carlbmunckelementary.org user accounts you want to use, and therefore want to set up forwarding to go to the ‘real’ email addresses of your PTA members, go to mail.google.com and log in as (e.g.) ptapresident@carlbmunckelementary.org. From Gmail, go to Settings:

Go to the Forwarding tab. This is where you will need to check what forwarding is currently in place, and correct it for the incoming board members. When you use the option to Add a forwarding address, the person who you are trying to forward to will receive an automated email, asking for their permission to accept emails forwarded from the carlbmunck.org email account. Once they accept that request, you will have to come back here to select their ‘real’ email address in the Forward a copy of incoming mail to field:

Managing GroupsManaging a group is quite straightforward and Google help is very comprehensive. You can create a new group, or edit members of an existing group, change access setting etc. For example, to add a member to a group:

Click Manage users in <group name> and simply type in the email address of the user you’d like to add to the group: