Hmm, I seem to remember writing a post on a very similar theme a little over a year ago! Back then, we were launching School Councils UK’s ambitious venture into the world of online interactivity and collaboration, taking them from a small site of static information to a large site with an emphasis on community, attempting to leverage the great asset they had in their Network of member schools.

Since then, the emphasis has changed somewhat and the site has been revamped to reflect this. School Councils UK wanted to offer their Network members a whole school resource, an online hub where member schools could manage their information, people and internal communication — so that’s what we gave them (see a taster of the functionality at http://www.schoolcouncils.org/require_login). This site is based on the previous one, so community features like message boards, opinion boards, polls and messaging are still there, as well as all the invaluable information published by School Councils UK; schools can also choose to share their information with the rest of the Network, making it easier still for members to learn from one another.

As the new homepage puts it:

‘School Councils UK have set up this site to provide you with help in three key ways:

• Help managing your own school council - document sharing, case studies, member management etc.
• Help from other schools and people - discussion forums, resource sharing, case studies, reading, about other schools on their profiles etc.
• Help from School Councils UK – the latest news, training and resources.’

The site’s also had a makeover to accommodate the extra functionality and hopefully to make the whole thing a bit more clean and tidy. Have a look at the new site at http://www.schoolcouncils.org/.