We are excited to announce that the new and improved Educator Hive, Smore’s school newsletter template center, is now live!

The Hive has been a lifeline for many of our educators this past year. Making sure that our newsletter template center is not only a source of inspiration and resource but that it is also accessible and easy to navigate, has been at the top of our priority list.

The newsletter template center houses hundreds of amazing templates created by real educators from around the world. You can use this hub as a place to gather inspiration for your next school newsletter or, if you see a template you love, you can duplicate it and easily insert your own images and content to make it your own!

Since our users were so influential in how and why we decided to update the Hive, we interviewed Smore’s Head of Product and Design, Barak Avidan, to give you an exclusive inside scoop into the updated version of Smore’s school newsletter template center, the Educator Hive:

Choosing to update Smore's school newsletter template center

Smore: How do you see this version different from the last one?
Barak: When we built the original Hive, we didn’t know how it would be received. Just a few years later and we have thousands of amazing templates created by real educators. This evolved into an essential school resource tool where other users can draw inspiration from and easily get started.

The biggest difference with the new version is that it’s built with modern technology. It’s designed with a similar layout to other Smore pages to make it feel more familiar. We also made the entire Hive open to the public, meaning people who are not Smore users can now explore different school newsletter templates and see all of the great content Smore has to offer prior to signing up.

We also made the entire Hive open to the public, meaning people who are not Smore users can now explore different school newsletter templates and see all of the great content Smore has to offer prior to signing up.

S: How long did it take you to develop and what feedback were you taking into consideration?
B: It not only needed to be developed, but it also needed to be completely redesigned. The biggest pain point we were trying to improve was to consolidate all of the school newsletter templates we had into one place. In the past, we had newsletter template centers for COVID19 or ones where you could specifically upload any back to school template. Now, we can add them as seasonal or temporary categories on the same page, making the search process more intuitive. It’s important to say that this is the first iteration and we plan on adding more and more to the new Hive.

S: What is your favorite update to the Hive?
B: I like that it feels like a more integrated part of the product, the old design didn’t feel updated. I also like that it gives non-users a taste of the amazing things they can accomplish with Smore in regards to improving their school communication.

S: How did you incorporate certain user feedback into the Hive?
B: The biggest thing for me was understanding and realizing that the Hive had really become a very valuable resource for our users. So, we wanted to make it as accessible, intuitive, and easy to navigate as possible, which is what our product is known for.

S: How do you hope this new update will help our educators?
B: I hope this becomes a space where educators explore ideas for school communication and expand how they currently use Smore. It will save them time figuring out what and how to design their school newsletter and help them get started immediately. I love that we are building a community and for the future, I want to add more community-like features to make the Hive even more fun.

Ready to get started on your first 2021-2022 back to school newsletter template?