A Green Newspaper?
by Tim Marshall
May 07, 2009
I admit I’m not the most environmentally aware person on the planet. Sometimes necessity motivates us to go beyond our normal behavior and try something new. We will likely start the 2009-10 school year with a budget that is about $130,000 less than this year. We’ve put together a series of budget cuts that we hope will be enough to meet our shortfall and while we’re hoping, we hope that the legislators have cut us all they plan to.
One of our goals for next year is reduce paper use. It costs us about $600 per month to publish and mail the “Update”, and we send “Charger Notes” home with students on a weekly basis. To help us reduce those costs, we plan to use the internet. We realize not everyone has internet access, so we will likely continue to send paper copies of notes and newsletters to those who still want it. But for those who have internet access, viewing information on line can save us quite a bit of money and . . . yes, help the environment!
We were reluctant to simply put our information on the web and expect parents and patrons to check regularly and one of our tech folks came up with a great idea. Podcasting has become standard with a lot of computer users and Steve Noll discovered that you can podcast text, as in the Update and Charger Notes. Here’s how it works. We put a link on our website that you as a user simply click on. That allows you to subscribe to articles we post. Once you’ve prescribed, new articles are automatically downloaded on your computer when you open a program called iTunes. This program is free from Apple and runs on both Windows and Macintosh computers. Once you’re subscribed, open iTunes and it will automatically upload any new articles. Then you can pick what you want to read and the program will allow you to open them and view them on your computer. If you want a paper copy, you can print your own copy.
We think this will be a great way for those of you with internet access to keep current without having to constantly check to see if there is anything new available. We’ll likely see fewer stray pieces of paper on our school buses too! We’ll be doing some surveying in the coming months to find out who has internet access, who’s willing to try this new way of keeping current, and who needs information mailed and shipped home with students. Please help us cut costs and save a tree or two!
