Digital Tool Walkthrough - Smore

 I wanted to play around with a digital tool I had never used before to learn more about it myself and teach other educators about it. In looking through a toolbox of resources I found Smore; a digital newsletter site. Since I would like to get the school newspaper at my school back up and running I felt this would be great to learn about as it may be an awesome contender for our virtual platform. So lets get started!

1. In your browser type https://www.smore.com/ or click this link!

2. You will arrive at the homepage. Click on the Sign up now (it's free) in the upper right hand corner. 

3. Signing up is very simple; you may either use your saved Google information or type it out. I suggest clicking sign in with Google. 

4. After you've signed in, you will be brought to the welcome page. You may select if you are making a newsletter for education, business, non-profit, or other. Since mine will be for the school setting, I chose education. 

5. After click education, it will bring you to a walk through page. Click on learn more about Smore at the bottom of the page to access that (or scroll down). If at any point you are done with the walk through you can also just click start a newsletter in the top right (or the very bottom if you scroll all the way through the walk through. 

6. Once you have clicked to start a new newsletter it will bring you to a page to create your own or start from a template. For the sake of time and since it is summer, lets choose the summer template. 

7. This will bring you to a newsletter full of summer resources and information. You can scroll through and edit any of the information currently there. You may also get rid of resources you do not wish to include. 

8. As you can see I edited the text at the top of the page to fit more for my current class. You can continue to scroll and edit as needed. 

9. When you get to the bottom of the newsletter you may also add in anything you want using these easy hyperlinks!

10. Once you are done, scroll to the top and click Done Editing in the top right corner. 

11. Once you have hit the done editing button, it will display a click to edit button where that once was. You will also have sharing options displayed at the top of the page. Click the way to wish to display and enjoy!

I really enjoyed the overall ease of use of this tool! I love that it has many options for premade newsletters and that you may even make those your own. I feel like this would be a great resource to use with students, however the only Delta I see is that the free version only allows for three newsletters (I used one to create this walk through)! If I want to use this for the year with students I will have to go "Pro" and pay. There are plans for the site ranging from $79 to $999 a year. Although if your district feels like funding it, the pro plans have even more resources!