EdTech Review: Oooo! Gimme SMORE!

Image from smore.com

It's not hard for me to get excited about something I know will help get the message of READING across to students, parents, and teachers.  At the end of the last school year, I found just that!  Sending home more than just a summer reading list was my goal.  I wanted to supply parents with resources to not only find books, but to foster reading love and fun.

Throughout the school year, I'd been sending home library media paper newsletters in the form of infographics (more about this in a future post).  Deciding to provide more content for the summer newsletter, I searched for digital newsletters and came upon Smore.  You can sign up for free and create 5 newsletters (called flyers) with this plan (to view education pricing for unlimited flyers, click here).

With Smore, my newsletter was nicely formatted and included images I could upload, links, and buttons (for summer reading lists).  There is SO much more that is possible to add--such as audio, video, events, etc.  You can share the newsletter via email or other social media platforms.

I emailed the newsletter to all teachers.  I asked them to share this with the parents of their students.  Since not all parents have email, I created a PDF through Smore and printed it for teachers to share.  Also cool, I was able to track how many people viewed the emailed newsletter.

Here is what my newsletter ended up looking like (note: the formatting is different because it's embedded in my blog: link here for original formatting).