The days are still long, the nights warm, and it seems like summer could go on forever. But as we turn our calendars to the month of August reality hits... school is right around the corner. For students to get a great education, it takes great effort from everyone involved. Students, parents, teachers, and administrators have to all be on the same page and know what's happening and what's expected. The better the communication between them, the better the chances for a good education.

This month OurChurch.Com is focusing on helping Christian schools and Christian teachers communicate effectively using the web. Principals and school board members, we'll be discussing issues and providing resources to improve your school website so it helps to foster better communication and relationships between teachers, parents, and schools. Teacher, we'll be talking about how you can develop better communication with parents regardless of whether your school website facilitates it or not. Parents and students, this is an opportunity for you to see what your schools and teachers could be doing, forward information on to them, and encourage them to move ahead.

1) Do Your Students Add or Ad?
2) New Custom CMS Express Service for Schools
3) School Website Discussion
4) School Website Blog Articles

1) DO YOUR STUDENTS ADD OR AD?
The last thing any student needs is more distractions, so if you manage a website for a school or class it's a very good idea to upgrade to the Ad-Free Option and have those distracting ads removed from your site. This month you can get a year of the Ad-free Option for just $75 or two years for only $129. This special is available to anyone, not just schools and teachers but only during the month of August.

2) NEW CUSTOM CMS EXPRESS SERVICE FOR SCHOOLS
OCC has introduced a new content management system designed specifically for schools. Consider how much communication and efficiency would improve at your school if your website included:

• A unique, attractive, custom design.
• A section for each class, which that teacher could update easily any time.
• A private, password protected page for each student which only the student's parents and teacher could see and only the teacher could edit.
• A comprehensive calendar with all school events, sports schedules, field trips, etc shown.
• Online event registration for anything that requires students, parents, teachers, or volunteers to sign-up for something.
• A school-wide e-newsletter plus unlimited other newsletters for each class, sports teams, extra curricular activities, etc.
• Online tuition and lunch payment system.

For more information on this powerful, yet affordable website system go to the Custom CMS Express for Schools page.

3) School Website Discussion
Have you got questions about improving your school or class website? Want to know how to take your school website to the next level? Want to share your experience as a teacher or school webmaster with others? Join our forum discussion on school websites.

4) School Website Blog Articles
This month in the Christian Web Trends blog goes back to school as well. We're sharing tips on school and class websites. And we've got some exciting interviews with teachers and school web administrators in which they will be sharing their insights into school websites. Stop by, read the articles, and share your thoughts on church website innovation.

5) Best Christian School Website Awards Canceled
OurChurch.Com wanted to recognize and reward those schools and teachers that have put in the time and effort to make their websites excellent, but unfortunately due to a lack of entries the awards have been cancelled. It seems that at this this most teachers and administrators are either not back to school yet or are focused on doing all the things necessary to start school.