In Administrators ,Ed Tech ,Teachers by Coachburk / Tags: LS Portal, Lutheran Schools, Portal /
This is limited to LC-MS School faculty.
You probably heard about the Lutheran School Portal. The Portal has been around for a few years now and already in their 2nd design. Does your school subscribe?
I do not think many teachers and administrators know how beneficial the Portal can be. There is almost so much there, it is hard to explain it all in one quick blog post. So I will be taking some time to break down some of the main sections in their own individual posts.
Here is what Bill Cochran states on the main page of the Portal ,
Welcome to the Lutheran School Portal! You have just entered a connection to all Lutheran schools in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod (LCMS). The Portal encourages, connects and informs all those that use it. There are a lot of benefits to being a subscriber to the Lutheran School Portal. Among those are the Premium Services that will help your school enrich the learning of the students. The Lutheran school is an instant link to numerous educational web-sites and services.
Even if your school does not subscribe to the Portal there are plenty of information you can access. Links to the Portal sponsors, links to different resources, and a Bible verse for each day.
Quickly I will write the downfalls of the Portal, it is a little robust. It can be difficult to find what you want, especially when they switched over to the 2nd version this past year.
After discussing with a fellow Lutheran Tech guy, he mentioned how there are so many different places for a Lutheran Educator to go to, can it be too much? His reference was, you have the Portal, plus you have the Synod’s own website, for Ed Tech you have the National Ning site and for our District our own Ning Site. You have LEA website also. Not to mention this Guild. Although each site does do something a little different, there is overlap. I which that the Portal would take all these great sites and somehow be able to embed it into the Portal, while each keep on their own also. It would be great when I go to the Portal I could see all of my Lutheran Sites. I shouldn’t have to go out and search for links to these sites or to be able to look at each District site. I want it all there and maybe a twitter window to see what our Lutheran Teachers are talking about on Twitter.
That is the brief overview and trouble I have with the Portal, I will talk about the great stuff in each of the following posts!
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I loved the portal when it first came out. I used it daily and contributed often. Our principal, Al Krause, was one of the developers and he made it easy for us to use every day as he posted messages, a weekly calendar, etc. on it. Inter-communication was done through the Portal. Since he retired, although we belong, it is used by only two of us and the new teachers were never given a password. I personally find the new “look” confusing (could be because I am old. LOL!) However, I agree that we have so many more venues to explore since this was developed. I find myself relying on Twitter more than ever for my resources and for instant help from many of the same contributors to the Portal. I am almost to the point of information overload.
However, it is nice to have so many resources in one place. Our school district page is kept up very well and has a lot of pertinent information that is not always shared with us. I go to Bible Gateway, the Resource page, the LEA page, etc. on a regular basis from the Portal. I don’t know what the answer is. I think perhaps a Twitter page to let us know when something new is added would be helpful. I have eliminated almost all my RSS feeds and use Twitter instead.
I think we were on the cutting edge of sproviding a resource to Lutheran Educators, but Facebook and Twitter are fast replacing most portals.