Dell MiniBook Winner Announced!
Over 3000 Midphase customers responded to our web hosting survey, the results are in and I?m pleased to announce the winner of our prize-draw is www.downtownmontessori.com
I caught up with Virginia Flynn, Head of School at Downtown Montessori to find out a little more about the Academy and their website.
Congratulations on winning the Dell MiniBook. How are you going to use it?
The Dell MiniBook will be used for record keeping, data entry, note taking, etc. We look forward to being able to travel to meetings with it.
That’s great, could you tell me a little bit about yourself and the Downtown Montessori Academy?
Downtown Montessori Academy is a small, diverse, non-profit Montessori Charter school that has been serving families in Milwaukee since 1976.? As the oldest City of Milwaukee Charter School, we strive to provide an environment that supports meaningful work in a community of learners that builds trust and allows children to create a vision for their future. I have been the director of Downtown Montessori since 1986.
Compliments on downtownmontessori.com, it’s a great looking web site. Did you build it yourself & if so how?
We built and maintained our website for 5 years.? It wasn?t until this past summer that we finally hired an outside firm to design our current site.
What prompted The Academy to build a web site?
It seemed more cost efficient to make the website our primary means of advertising to the community.? In addition, the school needed a way to relay information to parents without having to send home hundreds of paper copies each week.? This form of communication is now vital to us as we are a state certified Green & Healthy School.
OK, so why did you choose Midphase for your website?
The parent that originally established our websiteshopped around? for a few weeks. Midphase had the best bang for our buck.
& what do you use the web site for?
Our website is an essential tool for current and prospective parents. Our current parents use the site to find important dates and reminders. They can download and see any forms they may have missed during the year. We limit sending home paper copies whenever possible so our website needs to be updated often.? We also use the site to advertise our school to prospective parents.? They can learn about our history, curriculum and community.
Have you had any feedback from parents on the website?
Our parents love that all our resources are in one place.? Also, many new applications that come in state that they found our school using some sort of search engine online.
What advice would you give anyone thinking of starting a website for their school or community?
Go for it! Building a website is by far one of our wisest investments yet. It’s simple to do and cost efficient. Midphase even offers free simple site builders for the novice user. When our old site crashed we were able to build a temporary site using the site builder within days.
Are there any resources on the internet that you use, or could recommend?
Techsoup.org – Non-profits can purchase products and software at a discounted price.
For further information please visit the Downtown Montessori website. If you would like your website showcased on Midphase.com please send a brief description of your website to: editor@midphase.com