Case Study: Campbell Elementary

Campbell Elementary is an expeditionary learning showcase school with an interesting set of problems to solve. They're looking for a more engaging online community hub to replace their older, more static website.

Some of the more interesting problems we solved together:

The school is a Title 1 school with a high percentage of ESOL families (English as a second language). The entire website needed to be easily translated by community volunteers.
The site needed to be maintainable by non-technical volunteers.
Website volunteers had limited time, but they wanted fresh, engaging content on a regular basis.
Many parents aren't able to attend PTA meetings, so the group needed a way to bring the meeting to the parents.
The site needed to function as a volunteer and fundraising center for the community.

Multilingual Support

The Campbell Elementary community is a Title 1 school with a high percentage of ESOL families (English as a second language). The entire website needed to be easily translated by community volunteers.

Solution: Transposh Translation software

The Transposh WordPress plugin allows designated community volunteers to easily translate the website section by section. It also permits auto-translation by online services and outsourced paid translation consultants.

Easy, Fresh Content

Automated Twitter Updates

The Campbell PTA had a problem: they wanted the website to serve as a home base for their families online. But how to keep the community engaged? They needed regular, fresh content that was pre-vetted for COPPA (Children's Online Privacy Protection) releases, and the parent volunteers didn't have access to that information. Then we realized that the official school Twitter feed was already pre-approved for public consumption. We used the WordPress plugin Twitter Posts to Blog to automate a series of blog posts created from the school twitter feed.

Blog Post by Email

Not every PTA board member or committee volunteer was comfortable updating the WordPress site directly, so we used the WordPress plugin Postie to allow specific contributors to post to the blog via email. All official Announcement mailing list emails are automatically posted to the Blog in the Announcements category, and it's easy for volunteers to add PTA meeting minutes, treasurer reports, or other content via email as well.

Responsive Design

Online PTA Meetings

Campbell Elementary works very hard to make community participation easy and enjoyable for all of its families. They provide supper, babysitting, and translation services for all PTA meetings. But sometimes families just can't make it out to an evening PTA meeting. The PTA wanted to serve those families as well.

Solution: Online PTA meetings

After evaluating several solutions (Google Hangouts, Free Screensharing), the PTA settled on Zoom for these reasons:

Dial-in and webinar modes
Functional on computers and mobile devices
Good performance when people have poor connections

Fundraising

Rachael says...

Our experience working with Reidy was fantastic. Within several hours of our first meeting, Reidy sent out a tutorial that was easy to follow and understand. It was one of the most effective emails I have read in a long time. Reidy also organized the project into key components that allowed a large group of people to more easily send information and give feedback. Our project moved along smoothly because Reidy kept our internal stakeholders on track. Each phase of the project was complete ahead of schedule and feedback and advice we took from Reidy was clear and effective. The outcome is fabulous. She is always available to our group to answers questions, but her tutorials were so clear that a quick re-read is usually all that is truly needed. Our group has learned so much in this process and I am continually impressed with the outcome, professionalism and care Reidy brings to the table.