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Subject: Introduction to ScoresUp.com
Overview of Lesson Plan: The ScoresUp.com website is designed to make it possible for students to create and maintain a news and information website about their school, focusing primarily on student achievements in academics, interscholastic sports, and the arts. In this lesson you will use the ScoresUp.com site of a fictional high school to help you explain to your class how the site works. The use of this fictional site will also provide students with good examples of how revenues can be generated via ScoresUp's e-commerce capabilities.
Suggested Time Allowance: 80 minutes
Objectives:
Students will:
- Become familiar with the content and information that can be featured at a ScoresUp website.
- Learn the key ways that revenues can be generated from the operation of a ScoresUp website.
- Identify and understand the function of the various tools at the ScoresUp.com website.
- Understand that publishing on the Internet is a huge responsibility that must be taken seriously. Students will understand the boundaries of acceptable behavior in this class and the consequences for crossing those boundaries.
Resources:
www.scoresup.com
SP002 "Ideas for Promoting ScoresUp.com"
SP003 "ScoresUp.com Revenue Model"
SP004 "Obtaining Site Sponsors"
SP005 "Identifying Potential Advertisers"
SP006 "Patron Messages at ScoresUp.com"
SP007 "Using Your Online Store"
SP008 "e-Mail as a Business Tool"
SP009 "Creating Booster Club Partnerships"
SP010 "Organizing and Protecting Your ScoresUp Site Content"
SP011 "Online Auction Business Plan"
SP012 "Overview of Administrative Tools"
SP013 "How to Sell e-Coupons"
Activities:
- Begin this lesson by telling students that your class is going to convert itself into a live, real-world business this year. Tell your students that they will actually become employees of this business and perform real jobs. The business they operate in class will generate real money and the jobs they perform will provide them with genuine work experience that can be included on future college applications and job resumes.
Next, take the class to http://www.scoresup.com/Anytown/
Explain to students that Anytown is a fictional high school and this site is used only for demonstrative purposes. Tell the class that there are approximately 40 other high schools participating in the eCommEd curriculum and in prior years, the ScoresUp websites of those schools have attracted thousands of visits and generated thousands of dollars of revenues.
The first activity you will do focuses on the content found at the site.
Start your tour of the Anytown ScoresUp Site's home page by having one of the students read the "Welcome to Anytown High School" article that appears there.
When the student has finished reading this article you will visit the areas of the Anytown ScoresUp site that are highlighted in the article as follows:
Schedule of All School Related Events and Activities
Click on the "full schedule" button toward the top right-hand side of the home page to see Anytown's complete schedule of events. When the schedule appears, ask the class who in your school and community would find a similarly posted schedule for your high school useful.
Unique, Informative, and Entertaining Stories About Anytown's Students & Staff
Click on the "School News" button and have a student read the "Introduction" article to the class. Use the article about Anytown's newly hired Principal to demonstrate this feature of the ScoresUp site. Ask students to suggest stories they could use on a similar page at your own ScoresUp site.
Profiles of Anytown Students in the Classroom, On Stage, and On the Playing Field
Select the "Academic Achievements" button next and have a student read the "Introduction" article to the class. Then, focus your class's attention on the article about the Anytown student who has never had anything less than a perfect score on a math test. Ask your students if they know any classmates who have accomplished some pretty incredible things that your community would want to know about.
Interscholastics Sports Information
Next, select the "Sports Button" and have a student read the "Introduction" article to the rest of the class. Find out if any class members participate in your school's interscholastic sports program and if they do, ask them how the local media could improve its coverage of that sport. Then, click on the "Profiles" button on the "Sports" home page and show your class how articles about individual student athletes are displayed at the site.
At this point in lesson, ask students why it is crucial that a ScoresUp site be kept up-to-date and the quality of content (including subject, data, spelling and grammar) remains high throughout the year.
Acceptable answers include:
- Well-maintained sites with current information bring people back repeatedly. For example, ask how often would people buy the newspaper if it always had the same things printed in it day after day? By constantly renewing site content, the interest of site visitors is held.
- Well-written information is more enjoyable to read.
- Accuracy builds trust in your readers.
Movie Reviews
Select the "Movie Reviews" button next. Instead of having a student read the "Introduction" article aloud, ask your class if they think adults and teenagers like the same movies or have similar opinions about the same movie. The majority of students will most likely respond that the movie tastes of adults differ from those of teenagers. That's when you point out the value of having an online movie review column, written by teenagers for teenagers. Also point out that a local movie theater would probably be very interested in sponsoring such a column
Advice and Opinion Columns
Two things students in high school are known to have in abundance are advice and opinions. Sharing them can make for compelling content on your school's ScoresUp site. As you take them to the "Ask Riss" page of the Anytown ScoresUp site, tell your students it represents just one example of how students in your class or school, who have special skills, talents, or experiences in certain areas, can share them via the site. Perhaps your school has an automotive technology course. You could have students in that program to provide content for an Auto-Care page at your ScoresUp site. Point out to your class that an area service station, car wash, or auto parts store could be approached to sponsor such a page. Have the class suggest other areas of expertise for which student-generated advice and expertise would be appropriate.
Photo Gallery
Pictures can be worth a thousand words and lots of visits - especially to a ScoresUp website. Show your students how Anytown uses ScoresUp's Photo Gallery feature to provide site visitors with an insider's look at school activities. Be sure to point out that the Photo Gallery feature can also be used to create a gallery of student artwork.
Mailing List
One of the most fundamental mechanisms used by e-commerce websites to attract repeat business is the use of an opt-in mailing list feature. If visitors to a website enjoy and/or benefit from their visit, they are willing to join the site's mailing list so that when new content of interest is available. The ScoresUp mailing list mechanism permits your class to provide a mailing list sign-up option for visitors to your site who are interested in the content they discovered at your site, so much so that they wish to be notified via e-mail when more content becomes available.
Provide an example of how your class can convert this feature into revenue. Use a Movie Review page as your example. Every time a new movie review is posted at your site, your class sends previous visitors, who registered for your site's Movie Review list, an e-mail message telling them that a new review is available. A local movie theater showing that movie can be sold on the idea of sponsoring that e-mail message for a fee of $20 to $50. In return for their sponsorship, the e-mail message announcing the review can also include the times the movie being reviewed is showing at the sponsoring movie theater. Your class can even include a "Buy Ticket" link in the e-mail message if the sponsoring theater has on-line ticket selling capability.
You should conclude your review of the Anytown High School ScoresUp site by also mentioning and demonstrating the Trivia Question, Online Poll, and Patron Message, features of ScoresUp.
When you've completed your review of the Anytown site, ask your class how much ScoresUp content is too much content?
The correct answer to this question is that a ScoresUp site has too much content when any of the pages cannot be updated regularly. In other words, the content has grown old and stale. Another sign of problems is if pages are filled with inaccuracies, grammatical errors, and spelling mistakes. Nothing kills site visit rates more rapidly than links to empty pages or pages filled with old or useless content. What good is having a "Joke of the Week" feature at your site when it only gets updated once a month?
Emphasize to our students the importance of establishing manageable content objectives for your school's ScoresUp site from the very beginning. One of the keys to excellent site content is good planning. For example, let's say your class wants to feature a "Teacher Interview" page. Before creating the button and posting it at your website, your class should know the answer to the following questions:
- How frequently will a new interview be posted?
- Which students will contact the teachers to schedule the interviews?
- What questions will be included in the interview?
- How the interview be conducted?
- Who will edit the text?
Another key to having excellent content is to start small and gradually expand your content as the students become more skilled and comfortable in their job positions. For example, instead of creating separate buttons for each interscholastic sports team, create a single "Sports" button when beginning your site. Then, as your class becomes more organized and familiar with how the ScoresUp site resources work, then consider adding more buttons for individual sports and features.
- Now it is time to show students how they can make money via the operation of a ScoresUp website. Ask someone to tell you how the NYTimes.com site that the students looked at in their last class made most of its revenue. Someone should quickly respond with the correct answer, "advertising".
Next, go back to Anytown's ScoresUp home page and focus your class's attention on the advertisements that appear on that page. Click on the banner ad at the top of the page to show your students how the ads at ScoresUp can be linked to the advertisers own website. Then, once again visit some of the other areas of the Anytown Site and examine the ads found on these pages. Point out that the Sports home page includes an ad for a sporting goods store and the Movie Review page features an ad from the local movie theater.
Ask your students to name some of the businesses and organizations in your community who would advertise at your school's ScoresUp site and give reasons why.
The second form of ScoresUp revenue potential that you will show your class is the e-Coupon feature. Ask the class why businesses like to use coupons to market their products and/or services. A correct response would be that businesses like coupons because customers have to make a purchase to take advantage of them, which means a redeemed coupon is a sale and a customer for that business. Another reason why businesses like coupons is because they offer an incentive for a person to try a product - often for the first time. If that person is pleased with the product, they then become faithful and profitable regular customers.
Point out to your students that printing and distributing paper coupons is very costly for business, especially when the majority go unredeemed. The advantage of e-coupons is that the printing costs are passed onto the user and when a person takes the time to print out an e-coupon, the chances that it will be redeemed are much higher.
Show the class the e-Coupon page at the Anytown site. Point out how some of the coupons on this page are sponsored by businesses who also have banner ads at the Anytown site. Also point out how the organizations at Anytown High School make use of this page to promote their own school-events and fundraisers. Ask your class to come up with one potential use of this feature for a business or organization in your own community.
Next, you will show your students the Anytown site's online store. Show them how some of the products displayed in the store are being sold by groups inside the high school, while others are products and services that are available from businesses within the Anytown community. Explain that it will be possible to reach a deal with a local business to sell their products via the online store in a very similar fashion as Amazon does.
The next step is to visit the Auction section of the Anytown site to show your class how it is possible for them to run their own online Auctions this year. Click on one of the items being auctioned at the Anytown site so that your class can see how this feature, which is very similar to the eBay model, works.
Now visit the Anytown Girls vs Boys Basketball Game Page. Explain that just as MTV.com generates revenues via the promotion of concerts, your class can use it's ScoresUp site to promote school or community events that generate revenues. Anytown's ScoresUp class organized a gender bending basketball game, promoted it like crazy at their site and school, and charged a $2 per person admission.
- In the third stage of this lesson, you will bring your students to the administrative area of your ScoresUp.com Website to show them how they will get the content described in Activities 1 & 2 above, posted at your own ScoresUp site.
Begin this activity by pointing out that students in this course do not need to have any knowledge of or experience with html programming. Tell them that the course's developers have designed an interface that enables anyone who can type with two fingers to build and maintain websites that look professional.
At the Administration page of your ScoresUp site, quickly describe the general function of each of the Worker, Manager 2, Manager 1, and Teacher wizard tools listed on that page. Supplement SP04-012 Overview of Administrative Tools is provided to serve as a reference when performing this activity.
As a demonstration of how these wizard tools function, go to your site Set-Up wizard and show the class how easy it is to change the appearance of the home page of your ScoresUp.com site. Begin by showing your class the home page you created for your ScoresUp site before this class began. Then, use the Set-Up wizard to change the Mascot Name, Header color, and Menu Background color, which shows the class the results of these changes at the stage version of the site. Remember, if you do not want these changes to go live for all to see, you will need to reset the old colors and mascot name prior to making the stage site live again.
- Show students that in addition to the Student Supplement used in above, there is a complete collection of Student Supplements available with this course that are designed to help them complete the key content, marketing, and business tasks necessary to operate a ScoresUp e-commerce business. If you have time, review some or all of the following Student Supplements:
SP001 - Business Plan Outline
SP002 - Ideas for Promoting ScoresUp.com
SP003 - ScoresUp.com Revenue Model
SP004 - Obtaining Site Sponsors
SP005 - Identifying Potential Advertisers
SP006 - Patron Messages at ScoresUp.com
SP007 - Using Your Online Store
SP008 - e-Mail as a Business Tool
SP009 - Creating Booster Club Partnerships
SP011 - On-line Auction Business Plan
SP012 - Overview of Administrative Tools
- Explain the responsibilities of publishing a website that is available to people all around the world. Make sure your students understand that thousands of people will visit your class's ScoresUp site, including members of their family and community. Emphasize the fact that each student is accountable for keeping the site as professional and informative as possible. Mention that the site does have built-in filtering software that detects obscenities. Mention that there is a staging process involved in submitting information to the site. Tell students that you, as the teacher, will be able to trace every piece of information posted at the staging site back to the exact date and time it was entered and who it was entered by. Go through this process with your students.
Ask students for examples of inappropriate content and the consequences that they think would be appropriate. Establish any additional consequences you have determined and let your students know that those consequences will be strictly enacted if necessary.
Key Questions:
What are some of the risks an e-commerce company faces when establishing goals for site content that are very demanding?
Identify the target groups of people in your community who are interested in learning about the things happening inside your school?
What sources do these targets group of people use now to get information about the things happening inside your school?
What are some examples of things your class can do with your ScoresUp site content that will cause these target groups to come to your website when they want information, instead of turning to traditional sources?
Why is it important to act responsibly when publishing information on the Web?
Assignment:
- Students will read T03-01 "e-Commerce Business Plan" for Lesson 3.
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