ECHO is moving to the twenty-first century by making a transformation and going online.

“ECHO is going online because as America moves into technology of the twenty-first century so should our newspaper; and we, like most modern people, are on the internet all the time, why not utilize it,” ECHO news editor Sarah Rolufs said.

ECHO is going online for a few reasons such as modernizing the paper, and having relevant skills.

“Well there are a couple of reasons why I’m pushing for online: It’s a very relevant skill for my newspaper staff; that is what media is doing now.   The ability to write and publish for the web is a relevant skill that I think students who are studying journalism course should be doing now.  Also, it opens up a huge audience for us.  Whereas right now, with printing, typically half of our students really get and read the paper when we open up to the web we will encompass a lot more of our community members, parents, alumni.  We could update more quickly.  Our news can be more timely; so for the benefit of the students producing the paper and the students who read the paper, online seems like a very viable option,” ECHO adviser Mary Gillis said.

Gillis has been preparing for ECHO to go online for a while now and is now preparing her students.

“I’ve gone to a couple of big conventions.  One was in Portland Oregon last spring.  The Rolla Daily News helped fund me to go to that so that I could come back and have better skills.  I’m also earning an advanced degree in educational technology, where I’m learning about the benefits of it.  So I’m approaching it by first really informing myself so that I don’t have any problems helping my students, and then I took a couple of my students to see how the online system operates in a school that has successfully implemented a program and we got to see some of the quirks and learn from some of their early mistakes.  In doing that, I learned a couple of things: number one, we still do need to do some print media, because we don’t have electronic access.  So we are going to cut our paper in half and publish monthly in written form.  But at the same time, in order to have a successful online program, we also need to have stuff we can update daily.  We took their advice, and that of Mr. Eden, who is a  successful and highly respected journalism teacher.  He uses a company called School Newspapers Online, which is a word press based template that does a lot of things.  It’s very attractive: it’s neat, it’s not so over consuming that we can’t get started and create a very easy way for us to slide into that role,” Gillis said.

Students have many different views about ECHO going online.

“Parents will be able to read it, and I know my parents would like it. I personally like reading the hard copy at school,” senior Cassie Jamison said.

While other students believe that ECHO online will not be read.

“At RHS, even paper versions of ECHO are rarely read. I read them, but in my class only like 3 or 4 students of the 25 even picked one up,” sophomore Shelby Blakley said.

In order to ease the transition and not overwhelm readers, Gillis has a few ideas to make it a less dramatic change.

“We’re hoping to phase in the idea of rhsecho.com as the homepage for our high school and partner up with our school by being able to offer a way for students to come to that page and find information about the whole district. We will also have a twitter account which is rhsechonews.  So if you’re following us on twitter, my hope is that we will be able to sent students out who can access the twitter account and update sports scores and things that are going on in real live time so that they can appear on the ECHO site and also through Facebook.  The social networking sites are essential to be able to sell our online product” Gillis said.

ECHO intends to update stories, sports scores and more every day.

“We are going to update more often and have more pictures, video, and links” ECHO web master Kenny Bohannan said.

If the website is updated every day, then there will be much for the staff to learn and accomplish to keep you, our readers, entertained online!

“I think it’s a very neat program, we’re very fortunate to have Kenny Bohannan, who is a junior, and who is acting as our webmaster.  He’s been very ambitious about going online and finding out how to put this stuff online, how to take care of some of the basic questions, and what we really didn’t know up front.  It’s a great learning experience for all of us.  I’m very excited that people will be come in and participate in a little bit of conversation and discussion about our stories, staff, and polls that we put out there.  I firmly believe that this journalism is aiding our democracy, and I think is a really great way for people to be able to have access to their own voices,” Gillis said.