The American Heritage Dictionary defines collaboration as "To work together, especially in a joint intellectual effort." How then, you ask, does the website promote collaboration?

To better understand this question, it's important to realize how the web has changed. Some people call our current web a ‘second version of the web,' hence Web2.0. In this second generation web, everyone participates. Everyone can publish content on the web, like pictures, MySpaces, wikis, blogs, etc

Our website allows us to do just this. All the content is created by you, not just me, and each section is owned by a distinct group of authors and publishers - from teachers, to parents, to students, and board members.

• Student blogs - nearly 60 entries written by students in Middle and High School
• Teacher web pages - all teachers have a space to call their own and many update it weekly as an integral part of their course
• Discussion forum - an as of yet underutilized yet powerful collaborative tool widely used elsewhere on the web

Other exciting uses of the site:

• Embedded instructional video clips in several teachers' class pages
• Step-by-step help videos to help with the use of the website
• Collaborative sections developed by individuals to share best practices, professional development opportunities, and news
• Online Community Directory available to logged in users includes all staff contact details with easy links to their BFIS online contributions

Proof of our collaboration lies in the statistics:

• Nearly 220 visits a day
• Nearly 21,400 site visits since September
• 9,790 unique visitors
• Almost 400 registered users
• Over 500 different contributions, many with daily updates

Join in and visit www.bfischool.org !