A big thank you once again to the 500 + respondents to our online survey. We were delighted with your responses, your great ideas and your support for our site. We are working on implementing many of your ideas. In the meantime, here's our response to some of the survey topics.

Schooldays.ie Shop
Our survey showed that over 95% of respondents would like to see Schooldays.ie operate an online shop as part of our website. So we are opening a shop on the site in May offering you a new way to purchase your school books, have them covered and delivery directly to your home. We also hope to supply school bags through the site this summer. Later in the year we hope to expand the range of educational products which can be purchased through the site. We will let you know as soon as the shop opens.

26th May 2010 - Shop Now Open , Click here to visit our new shop

In the meantime, to help us customise the shop as much as possible, we would appreciate if any of you who could lay your hands on your last years school book lists could email them to us at info@schooldays.ie or fax them to us on 01 9022747or even just pop them in the post to us at Schooldays.ie, PO Box 10718, Blackrock Co Dublin

Site Navigation
Most of you found the site ‘easy to navigate’ or ‘ok to navigate’. The range of information on our site now runs to thousands…. yes thousands of pages! We will keep working to improve the navigation but remember if you are having difficulty locating information quickly through our menus, the Search link on our blue pencil will provide a search tool for all information on the site.

News Articles on Education & Parenting issues
It’s great to hear that so many of you find our daily news updates on topical education and parenting issues interesting reading and it is great to see more and more of you taking the time to post your comments on the stories. For the few of you who responded that you were not aware of our news feed, you can view the daily stories on our home page on the top left under ‘Latest News Stories’. You can also click on ‘Education News’ on our green menu to see further stories and to also view stories categorised for ‘parents’, ‘teachers’, ‘ primary news’ etc. There is also an option to download our news feed.

Parents Network
While lots of you felt that our Parents’ Network was a great idea, some of you were disappointed on joining the Network for your school to find there were no other parents in your network. We have written to all Parents Associations throughout the country to let them know about the network but we also need your support as individual parents to let as many parents know about the network as possible. We have had thousands of parents join the network, but with thousands of schools across the country, it may take a little time to build up the membership and for members to join your group. For those of you who said they weren’t familiar with the ‘Parents Network’ read our explanatory note to understand how it works and how to take part.

Additional Resources & Features Requested:
You have given us so many ideas for further content that it would take too long to list them all here but we will get working them straight away. A few respondents to the survey mentioned areas which already exist on the site which I have highlighted again below:

Bullying – there is a full resource section dedicated to issues surrounding bulling at school which can be found on http://www.schooldays.ie/articles/bullying
Dyslexia – we recently created a new section on Dyslexia which can be found on http://www.schooldays.ie/articles/dyslexia-resources
Second hand school books – this section already exists on our site and provides a facility where parents can advertise second hand books for sale, or contact other parents selling 2nd hand books – the link for this page is http://www.schooldays.ie/articles/second-hand-school-books
Useful learning websites - there are currently links on the site to “useful sites to help with homework” ‘primary level’ and at ‘secondary level’. We will be extending information on learning resources for individual subject areas over the coming months.
Forum for Boards of Management to discuss fundraising issues etc - Parents Association or Boards of Management can register on the site to allow them to make announcements to parent members and also to access the Parents Association Forum to discuss fundraising and other issues. Further information .


Some of your survey comments on our site which made our day!

“I think the site covers most topics of concern to parents – keep up the good work”
“I think you are doing a great job”
“The site is brilliant but not enough parents know about it – try and get it advertised more”
“Carry on doing what you do – it works”
“It’s a great website – I’ve invited all my friends to join on Facebook and they love it”
“I think it has everything covered and it so easy to use and looks great”
“I find your features are very topical”.
“Keep up the good work – love receiving your ezines”
“it’s pretty comprehensive”
“I think you have it all”
“I think the website is perfect as it is”
“very topical and informative”
“I am very grateful for you not clogging my inbox but would like to receive a few more emails”

Thanks again for taking part in our survey. Remember to send us in your last years’ school book lists if you can lay your hands on them. Keep an eye on our site for the new resources and the opening of our new shop in May.

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