Today we're really excited to announce a new feature that has been in the works for over six months now.  Those of you who have reading incentive programs for the kids at your elementary school will love this.  At our school, our reading incentive program is called "Eager Reader", and typically runs for a few weeks.  Kids are encouraged to read at home, keep track of their minutes, and they can earn prizes based on the number of minutes they read.  In the past, we've always given them a paper form to track their minutes, and we had an army of volunteers whose sole job it was to decipher the kids' handwriting, tally up the minutes, and hand out prizes.  Well, last year, for the first time, we did it all electronically through our website, and it was fantastic!  Kids loved going online to the PTSA website and entering their minutes into their own personal online reading log.  Parents loved it because they could easily sign in to their own accounts to approve their kids' minutes and see their progress.  But our volunteers were absolutely delirious when we handed them a spreadsheet each week already populated with the list of participating kids from their classroom and the weekly minutes already tallied up for them.  You can read a bit more about the program in an article our local newspaper published.

Today, this feature is available to all Our School Pages customers for $40 per year.  But if you like, you are more than welcome to try it out for free for 30 days.  Just visit your Billing page to start your free trial.

To get started with the feature, you need to first have an appropriate program, for example "Eager Reader".  If you don't already have this, start by adding it on the Programs page under PACKET SETTINGS.  Then, under EXTRA FEATURES, click on Reading log programs, and then the [+ new reading log program] button.  Fill in the form to configure your reading program.  You can decide whether you want students to be able to enter their own minutes (recommended, because it's fun!) or whether you want parents to do all of the entry.  You can also decide whether your school does weekly tallying or monthly tallying.  Press Next when everything looks right.  The next page gives you the ability to customize the "virtual badges" that are offered.  For now, you can leave the badges the way they are, so just press Save.

Once you've created your reading log program, you will be provided with two links:  a student entry link and a parent entry link.  These links lead to specially designed built-in pages on your website that allow students and parents to view their reading logs and record their minutes.  When you're ready to go live with the feature, it is your responsibility to publish these links on your website -- on the menu bar, in an email blast, or in a newsletter -- so that parents and students can easily get to the reading log entry pages.

Here's an example of what the student entry form looks like: 

As you can see, students simply type in the number of minutes they read each day, and the page automatically saves the changes and tallies their minutes for them.  Students can also earn virtual badges, which are shown at the top of their reading log, when they reach certain goals.  It's just another fun way to encourage reading.  When students enter their minutes using their online reading log, their parents receive an email asking them to approve the minutes.  Parents will need to visit the parent entry log in order to approve the minutes.

On the back end, administrators have full access to reports that show each student and how many minutes were read each week, or each month.

Give it a try and let us know what you think!