Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Smore (Stacey)

So for this assignment, I chose to research Smore.  I chose to research this website because it had to do with newsletter which is something that I would like to implement this year in my classroom.  I found the website was helpful but not necessarily everything I was looking for. 


When you enter this website, it is pretty self explanatory.  It gives you tutorials right there on the main page.  There are three tutorials (just slides on what is going on but no voice)
-Designing a Flyer
-Sharing your work
-Analytic tour

I went through each of these tutorials before I got started on my "flyer".  It seemed to me to be pretty well spelled out for the user when you looked at each of these tutorials so I felt like I was ready to play and so I did. 

So here is my "flyer" I created and here is how the process I went through in order to do it. 


  • When you click on the "Start a New Flyer" button, it brings you a window that gives you 6 choices---event, business, for sale, news bulletin, class and other.
  • I clicked on News Bulletin because I figured that one would be the closest to what I am looking to use it for.
  • Once I was there, it was pretty easy to navigate around what was on the page.  I did a rough draft of one and it was easy to implement the pictures and text. 
  • At the bottom of the page, there are things that you could add to the page as well---video, more pictures, more text boxes, links to websites, etc
  • When I was done, I hit save and it brought me to a page where I could share my page via google docs, Facebook, Twitter, website, etc.  I did not share it to anything but was able to copy the URL for the page and it saved it in my folder on the website.

Overall, this website tool was easy to navigate and could be used for many different reasons.  I am not 100% sure that this is what I am looking for my task of classroom newsletters but it did have the capability to print the newsletter as well so that my students' parents without access to internet could get one but that struck many questions in my head.  I was also unsure of the whole sharing via Facebook, Twitter, etc but I guess that is the world in which we live.  I could definitely see businesses using this website to advertise for themselves.  I did find it interesting that there was a page (analytic page) which tracks your visitors to the page, RSVPs etc.  which could be a good thing but for me would be unnecessary.  Another thing that is something to take it into account is that it does cost money--$59 per year----which to me ???

So overall I would give the website tool a 7 out of 10.

Hope you found this to be helpful!




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