Quick intro: I have a BA in Special Education, but left the
field years ago to go in to business for myself.
I'm writing to request your feedback on an idea for
generating new revenue for schools, by helping schools go
in to business for themselves. This is rough, a first
draft, can you help me perfect or discard this proposal?
In these times of budget crisis...
Imagine a high school that reinvents itself, as a
publishing company. The end product of many school projects
would be to create content for the school website.
Examples:
- If a class studies the civil war, the end product of
those studies should be civil war articles for the school
website.
- When students learn French, they then teach it to others
on the school website.
- When the basketball team plays a game, the game is filmed
for the school website.
- A forum that creates lots of content for search engines,
and connects the high school to the community.
And so on...
The high school has 1,000 students. These are the
reporters. The school has 75 teachers, the editors.
Imagine an online publishing venture that has 1,000
reporters, and 75 editors, and years to build it's website.
Consider the kind of income an online enterprise of that
scale could generate.
A business oriented high school website could....
- Provide a remedy for budget cuts. And relief for
taxpayers.
- Connect students to the community, and the community to
the school.
- Give the students real world work to do, making education
more meaningful to them.
- Teach the students skills they can make a living with
upon graduation.
Most high schools have a website, but few probably take it
seriously, and view it as an income generating business.
What say you?
Could the right schools make this work in some form or
another?
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