We've finally done it.  We've jumped on the blog bandwagon.  This will be a great way for us to tell existing customers about updates and fixes; a good source of information about the company for potential customers; and, a way for me to ask questions, make suggestions, and vent.

Also, after reading blogs online for the last few months, I think they would be a great tool for teachers to communicate with parents and students.  Teachers could take a few minutes each day to enter homework assignments and info quickly and easily.  They could also add pictures and links as needed, link to files for students to download, the possibilities are limited only by the imagination of the teachers, students and parents.

Here's a little background on the history of teacher webpage management at BlueChalk Software.  When we first started designing a web page management system for Advance Public Schools, we made the system too complicated.  It was hard to use and teach.  Teachers weren't happy with it so we decided to simplify.  Our second version was a bare-boned, text based system.  Teachers could put up information in different pages, but they couldn't add pictures or change the layout.  It worked well, but our clients soon wanted more features, with many switching to FrontPage to design full websites.  The full websites looked great and worked well, but often they were too difficult to manage and had out-dated information.

I think that the blogs would work well for teachers because they combine the quick and easy editing with the features that teachers want.  Some days they will simply want to put up homework assignments, some days they will want to upload pictures of a recent field trip.  The blog allows both scenarios.  Once we start beta testing a blog with one of our clients, I'll post a link to it here.  Thanks!