With the launch of our collaborative website this September, your participation has been important to its success. We have over 150 parents, teachers and staff registered on our site. In just a few weeks we have had nearly 3000 visits from approximately 1700 unique visitors! Of the 3000 visits, 40% of those are from returning visitors. Our visitors are spending nearly five minutes per visit on our site. English, Spanish and Japanese are the three most common language-settings our visitors' computers are set to. The most common search terms used to find our website are "Benjamin Franklin international school," "bfis," "Benjamin Franklin Barcelona, "international school Barcelona, and "Benjamin Franklin school Barcelona."

The Community Directory is one of the most popular pages, which means it is important we have a complete and up-to-date directory. Thus, each profile page should have an image associated with it. To make this easier for you, a school picture is available on Webteach / Website Staff Photos. Please take a moment to update your profile image and any other information on your profile you would like to embellish - such as About Me or Additional Information if you have not done so already.

The ‘Elementary Classrooms' link is one of the top 20 hits on the website. Since this is another entrance to the teachers' class pages, after the Community Directory, it is important that each teacher has his/her class page up-to-date with current and relevant information for your students and parents, as appropriate. Pat Moore's web page is among the top 30 most visited pages on the whole website! Carolina Baez and Bradley Bergey's class pages are within the top 60 most visited pages on the site. Middle and High School teachers, since there is no single entry point for your class pages, tracking the success of your page is based on individual pages, like Bradley's. Genevieve Hiltebrand and Keelin Swalve have pages that are other examples of how the website can be a regular part of your communication with parents and students.

As the webmaster, of course I see the benefit in adding the website to our growing list of available communication tools, but I am not alone; a number of parents and students have expressed their appreciation for the information some teachers make available to their students and parents. To give all our community members the opportunity to be more involved in what is happening in the classroom, let the website help you in that endeavor. As a school, we would like to commit to our parents and students that by the end of the month of October, all our profile pages and class pages will be edited and up-to-date. Hopefully, by that point more of you will be using the site as a regular part of your classroom communication.

Help is available in a number of forms - personal help will be continued to be made available at various times in the month, online help files many with videos are always available on the website, and the discussion forum is where you will post your specific questions. I will answer questions posted in the forum within a day, although anyone else with the answer might be able to give help even sooner. The advantage of using the forum is that we all can benefit from the questions one person asks. So please ask questions in the appropriate forum! I will answer forum questions before those asked by email.