As an early childhood educator, parents are entrusting you with their precious babies. In doing so, you are expected to wear many hats– a coach, a mediator, and a teacher to name a few. But probably the most important role you have is as a communicator. You need to be a good communicator with your students and peers, but maybe most importantly with parents. While this can be a daunting task, approaching communication through a variety of avenues is manageable and makes all the difference in strengthening your partnership with parents. Read more…

If you’re in the early childhood education field you probably know that there is an ever-increasing amount of networks and online sources for ECE professionals to get the latest news and resources. I’ve personally gotten to know quite a few experts in the ECE field and can recognize when there’s good content that needs to be shared. So we’ve decided to start a monthly newsletter geared specifically to helping Early Childhood Education professionals find that content. Read more…

One of the challenges that organizations have experienced with MemberHub is the ability to communicate at multiple levels within their organization. For example, many of you have created an organization-wide hub, but you’ve always had to remember to add new people to that hub along with any other groups they  need to collaborate with. A new feature in MemberHub called Hub Trees is designed to help our customers communicate more efficiently at all levels in their organization. Read more…

Is preschool a worthwhile investment for our country? This will certainly be a hotly debated topic over the coming years in light of Obama’s Preschool for Every Child initiative.

The folks at Education News have put together a nice infographic (scroll to end of post) that supports the case for preschool.

Read more…

Underwood Elementary, a GT Magnet Elementary School in Wake County, NC has been using MemberHub for the past year. They launched the use of the service over the summer of 2012 with the goal of strengthening communication among teachers and parents at the school.

I recently spoke with Andrea Trowell, the Media and Technology Specialist at Underwood and we discussed the schools growing passion for MemberHub. Andrea sent out a survey to teachers and parents about communication within the school using MemberHub. Here is what they have to say: Read more…

Sending text messages has been an integral feature in MemberHub from the very beginning. Calendar event reminders can be sent via text message, but the primary way administrators send text messages is through MemberHub’s Announcements feature. We’ve made a change to Announcements that we anticipate will be well received! Essentially, we have removed the 160-character limit that was placed on new Announcements. Read more…

We’ve made some small tweaks to the Whiteboards feature. Nothing too fancy, but very much needed. As a reminder, Whiteboards are an easy way for groups to create simple signup sheets, brainstorm ideas on a particular topic, or to post additional information for members of their hub. Whiteboards have version tracking and members can edit the whiteboard content or leave a comment at the bottom. Read more…

Early childhood learning programs thrive when the adults– parents, teachers, and administrators– communicate well. Of course, as a professional, you probably already know a LOT about great parent communication. This webiner will help you apply what you know using digital strategies. Read more…

Google Places is very important to your business. As a “vendor” in your community, whether you’re a business, church, preschool or day care facility, you simply must show up on the Google map when people search for your keywords. For example, if you have a local day care in Raleigh and you want people to find you on the web when they search “Daycare  in Raleigh, NC” if you’ve registered with Google Places not only will a pin be dropped on the map, but your customers can leave Google Reviews about your organization.  Read more…

We have released an enhancement to the Discussions feature in MemberHub. It has been redesigned for improved readability and and browsing.

Each hub has its own Discussion Board which acts like a mailing list for the members in that hub. When discussion threads have many messages that have been sent via email, Read more…