Camp Livingston
July 17th, 2005 by RebeccaCamp Livingston is a Jewish summer camp for kids and teens. They just recently started a blog. Their blog is specifically for daily activities that the kids are involved in. I contacted the camp on Friday and I spoke with the camp director, Andy Brown. He was very helpful and very much bought into using a blog. He said that they had tried to do newsletters to the parents of campers but that it just wasn’t reaching as many people as they wanted.
Basically the blog has a picture of an activity and a paragraph describing what is going on in the picture. Mr. Brown said that they had an assigned staff member who went around to the counselors and got a paragraph they had written about an activity that day. He said that the staff member would then take a picture of the activity and go back and load the picture and paragraph himself.
As far as putting the information on the blog, I think that this would be a good idea for Camp ASCCA. They could assign an intern or staff member to collect the info for the blog and post it for the counselors. This would eliminate the problem of not having enough computers for counselors to use and it would also eliminate posts being put in moderation until they can be reviewed. Mr. Brown also said that they didn’t have to provide incentives because they would be expecting the staff member to come get the info. This would also eliminate counselors not posting.
Overall he said that it was a great success so far. He said that it was especially big with the parents being able to find out more about what goes on at camp.
July 17th, 2005 at 11:40 pm
I like the idea of a special camper of the day getting to write something for his/her parents to see, with a photo of their activity. While at Camp Livingston, I’m sure that most of the campers have cell phone cameras or digicams, I’m guessing that Camp ASCCA campers aren’t like that. That would be a nice way to recognize different campers, and way for the parents to see the campers enjoying themselves.
I do love that Livingston has names like Golan and Masada. I wonder if they have the Masada campers re-enact the siege, and if they make the Golan work on communal kibbutz farms.
July 20th, 2005 at 5:09 pm
It’s nice to know that blogs aren’t just mediums to express opinions, but also tools that allow value added communication between parents, thier children, and their community. This is a great example.