On a cold Saturday last December, more than 30 teachers and librarians met to discuss maintenance for SchoolRooms™. This select group was chosen to serve on the SchoolRooms Advisory and Maintenance (SAM) team based on their credentials and previous work with SirsiDynix on the development of SchoolRooms. These educators are committed to making SchoolRooms the best resource for K-12 students, educators, librarians and parents.
 
The SAM team members will create content, find Web sites, replace broken links and develop editorial calendars for the upcoming months. Because the Web is dynamic, these educators must constantly look for great sites and weed out the sites that become unusable.
 
After sharing techniques for finding the best Web sites available, the educators spent a large portion of the day learning how to create editorial calendars. An editorial calendar is developed for each grade level and subject to cover the entire school year. For example, one calendar will be created for the Elementary Math Room, another for the Middle School Math Room and a third for the High School Math Room. Calendars are also created for the Audience Guides. These calendars highlight important topics for each month of the year and serve as a guidance tool for SchoolRooms content creators.

Educators are the best resource for creating SchoolRooms editorial calendars because they know what is being taught in the classroom. Using resources such as state and national standards, educational Web sites and their own lesson plans, SAM team members can select topics relevant for a particular month.
 
In addition to guiding content creators during the maintenance process, these calendars are also beneficial to SchoolRooms clients. Educators who use SchoolRooms in the classroom can look at the calendar to see what topics are highlighted four months ahead. The calendars do not cover every aspect of SchoolRooms, but they do provide great ideas for educators to use in the classroom. Many topics are ones that are studied in schools throughout the country, such as Women’s History month or National Poetry month.
 
Currently, SAM team members are busy working on editorial calendars for the 2007-2008 school year. The calendars for the remainder of the 2006-2007 school year are now available, and the 2007-2008 calendars will be available for clients in April.