ideas for other (fall) topics could include (for ideas for parents for the following summer):
your child (by grade) favorite books over the summer were....
best local summer camps (by age or grade) were...................
best local summer classes for extra tutorials were.........
another way besides a moderator, to keep junk postings to a minimum is to require a registration with an active email address for activation in order to post anything. many sites with blogspots have them and takes away some of the complete anonymity of the whole thing.
I thnk message boards at indiv shcools or district wide is a fantastic idea.
This is 2007 where people dont meet up casually at school, who walks to school any more????
Discussoin boards bring people and ideas together, and if someone wants to bash a teacher on the public baord, that is plain bad manners and not a reason to NOT have a message board, they bring so much in other ways.
Not having a msg board for fear of how it may be misued, dimisses the bigger postives it can brign to the school comminuty and making the school better.
The only thing i would suggest, is that you have a moderator, someone that can ferret out the posts that get flagged for poor , or incorrect, content. So you also need a function to 'report post', just like there is here on these , and just about every public, cyber boards.
Not sure how I will procede for our school. Think about Tim's feedback and if you want to move forwrad with a message board, I'll be happy to help. Contact me directly at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
Great points to think about before going forward. Maybe it would be a better idea as a district wide PTO/A parent site. Of course that only addresses the amount of traffic, not the responsible use issue.
All good ideas... but can i shift the subject slightly and add a note of caution.
I'd just suggest treading very lightly in this area on your school/group web site. Two issues:
1. One of the keys to a successful message board is frequent discussion, and that takes tons of people. 90% of your visitors won't post at all, 5% will post rarely and maybe 5% will get active. If your site has 100 regular visitors, that doesn't leave much room for error, discussion-wise. I've yet to see one-school message board really work. The topics like below (reading with the kids, getting kids ready for back-to-school) are done much more effectively on broader sites/boards, where there's a high(er) volume of good ideas.
2. The biggy. The real danger is that these boards have a tendency to invite difficult conversations (and anonymity). Will an aggrieved parent blast a teacher in a 2AM fit of frustration? What will that lead to at scIt. It's really, really easy for folks to go too far on message boards and say things they'd never say in person in front of (virtual) crowds who don't need to be in that conversation.
Understand the attraction of the idea, but there are significant downside risks.
