Principals Should Try Blogging

Principals often need to be able to share information quickly and efficiently with different people and organizations, including school board members, teachers, parents, community members, the press, state officials, etc. To this point, principals have mainly focused on paper-based newsletters and messages. To disseminate messages more efficiently, administrators should try blogging.

Blogging allows a user to control the flow of information coming out of the school in a efficient and relatively painless way. Through blogging (especially at regular intervals), principals can select a particular audience to target (e.g., parents), craft a message that is clear and concise, allow for feedback, and publish their thoughts within a matter of minutes.

Gone are the days of running copies for every student in the school, forwarding messages to multiple groups of people, or learning that information was taken out-of-context by a member of the press. Instead, principals will be able to save resources (and funding that should go towards the education of their students), include everyone in their update (by publishing on a regular schedule), and ensuring that only the information that they want to be publicized is done so (by personally controlling what they publish on their blog).

While it's a leap of great lengths for some, blogging should be viewed as a viable method of information dissemination and public relations.