Our post on scholastic media traffic data a couple weeks ago had a data category called "Bounce Rate." Essentially, bounce rate is when someone goes to one page of your site and then doesn't continue to a second. Statistically, you want a low number for your bounce rate. Work to keep visitors on your site longer. Check out these 5 tips to lower your bounce rate from Mallary Jean Tenore. Mallory gives suggestions ranging from giving them more of the content they are clicking on to linking to related content within your site.

Of late, the news out of Carmel (IN) High School hasn’t been all that great. The men’s varsity basketball team has been at the center of a controversy involving alleged incidents of bullying, which has led to police investigations and additional claims of harassment, sexual misconduct, criminal confinement and criminal deviate conduct. This has led to an ongoing story covered by both the HiLite – CHS’s student news publication – and professional news outlets.

That being said, this is not yet an article about that incident, although from a scholastic news organization’s standpoint the story has provided a tremendous real-time opportunity to teach journalism students about news and the role a publication plays in disseminating that news to its readers. It’s also been a prime opportunity to illustrate how having an online component can help to provide breaking news as it happens. However, that story I’ll save for later; we’re still in the midst of the investigation and the student editors are still covering that story as it unfolds.

Rather, what this article will cover is how you and your online staff can use online tools – specifically the annotation tool in Google Analytics and the tracking information embedded in the dashboard of WordPress – to track your online traffic. I mention the basketball incident because it is relevant to this discussion.

I’ve had my staff members create print portfolios of their work at the end of each semester for years. I think it’s nice for them to have a collection of their work once their time on staff is over. The portfolios (with resumes included) have proven to be beneficial for staffers looking for jobs, as well as applying for colleges and scholarships. In addition, they serve as great alternative assessments in place of a written final exam.

Last semester, as I was evaluating the semester project, I decided to use my editors as guinea pigs and have them create an online portfolio in addition to their hard copy version. For a first attempt, I think it went very well and it’s something I’ll probably be instituting staff-wide next year.

Podcasts and Voice Thread slide shows.  I made a brief slide show of my son walking around as R2D2 on Halloween as an example.  http://voicethread.com/share/931107/

RTDNF and HSBJ.org hosted a Webinar Feb. 19 with Dr. Sybril Bennett, an Associate Professor of Journalism specializing in new media at Belmont University in Nashville. A replay of the Webinar can be found on the HSBJ.org Web site. The 50-minute talk covers everything from Twitter, Facebook and Buzz to the need for more how-to videos, educating students on social media, and using Google's Fast Flip. The archived Webinar can be found here.