ACA Home Forums Bunk1 or other websites....

My camp uses Bunk1 to post pictures and updates and communicate with parents while their campers are with us. Does your camp do the same or use a similar site?

Part of my new tasks for this year involved updating Bunk1 daily with photos and whatever else. Have you ever done this or know a staff member who has? Have you had positive or negative feedback about these kinds of sites and your camp?
And advice on this in general?

I'm not sure if we use that same program but we do communicate with our parents by sending pictures out every day of the campers and then we send out newsletters via email three times a week. Parents and grandparents love it.

A camp I worked at a few years ago used Bunk 1. Though, I remember that it wasn't that popular because the parents had to pay to use it (send e-mails, see pictures). So, the next summer, the council just put pictures up on the regular camp website and had people e-mail their daughters to generic e-mail address.

The camp I'm at now doesn't use Bunk 1, they use something called Bunk Notes. I think the camp pays for an account, which allows parents to send one way e-mails to their daughters at camp. I don't think the parents have to pay anything extra for this. Then for the pictures and videos, the camp uses Camp Minder. This is linked straight through the camp's website and is simply a way to organize all the videos and pictures. This is password protected, and the parents are given an account once their camp fees are paid. Counselors are also given an account once they are hired. It is up year round, so it's a good source for new staff to see what camp is like.

- Teenster

I know we used to use Bunk Notes; I wonder if we use both now or not... I know if I were a parent I wouldn't want to have to pay extra. I registered myself on Bunk1 yesterday and you can view the camp's site/photos for free, but to send emails you'd have to pay more.

Very interesting! Thanks for letting me know, I'll have to try and learn all the details before camp this year in case parents ask. I know we give them a promotion code at check in for it, but I don't know if that's just to help register or not.

My camp uses Bunk Notes for parents to send emails to their campers. We used to have a regular email address they could send to, but there were problems with viruses and we were wasting a lot of paper because of all the extra text that tends to come with emails sent from company email addresses (they talk about conifdentiality and intended recipients and all that nonsense). Bunk Notes is a lot easier to deal with. And for parents who don't want to pay, there are other options. We allow parents to fax letters for free, and they are welcome to give the staff pre-written letters to be distrubuted throughout the week.

For pictures we used flickr but we did not use any of the campers names. We dont use an e-mail system basically because the office staff has enough mail/packages to sort out on a daily basis.

I remember passing out promo cards to parents. They need that code to register, but they still have to pay.

- Teenster

We are not allowed to post photos of campers on the internet. It's not heavily enforced, but we aren't even supposed to be friends with campers on Facebook.
That would be so cool if we could do the Bunk1 thing, though, so families can see what their kids are up to!

We aren't allowed to be friends with campers on facebook either, and I'm totally fine with that. We also can't post pictures of campers on facebook. We are allowed to post just staff pictures, or we can block out the campers' faces.

When parents sign up for camp, they sign a release that allows us to put pictures of campers up on the camp's website. The pictures are only on our own site.

- Teenster

We werent allowed to be friends with campers on FB either - and I am happy with that cos I think it takes away from the aura of being a their counsellor if they know who you are in the outside world!

Truth! As CIT director I got special permission from council to be friends with the CITs, though, so I can get to know them before camp starts and we can build up a bit of a relationship, which is really nice.

We're also not allowed to post camper photos except on the camp/council website and bunk1; and ONLY the girls whose parents said it was OK. Part of my job will be checking to make sure no girl whose parents didn't consent to her photo being taken or used gets posted - which is going to be very fun for me, I'm sure.
Bunk1 is safe because it's password/account protected, and you have to be approved by the camp to get the account. So far I haven't found a way around their security (this is a good thing!).

I don't friend campers on FB until they've graduated high school and somehow found me; and even then I usually wont add them unless I have found out they have applied for a camp position. It's made some CIT's mad at me for being "elitist" because they don't yet understand.

Yeah, we aren't allowed to be friends with a camper, including CITs until after they have turned 18 and graduated high school (and are thus no longer able to return as a camper). I generally wouldn't find campers but I suppose that might change in like 9 years when the first sets of my campers are actually graduated! hehe. There is only 1 CIT that at this point I even want to be friends with and she graduates in May and will be 18 at that point I believe.

We aren't allowed to post camper pictures either, though it's ok if the kid is in the background and not facing the camera I'm sure! hehe I'm ok with the rule and have stuck by it completely as I understand why it's there (plus, I'm such a rule-follower!)This is what I find stupid though. One of the directors totally has at least one camper picture up on her Facebook page. They finally enforced the friending of campers and CITs rule, but they still have done nothing about the pictures rule. I don't particularly like this director either. I don't think that one of the directors has pics of the kids and I know another one doesn't, but that third one does and it really bugs me because they expect these things from us but they don't even tell the director to take it down if they know it's there. I really want to comment on it and say something like "CAMPER PICTURE!" but I kinda don't want to be the target of this director's wrath as she already does NOT like me personally and knows that I'm a good counselor but doesn't always treat me nicely anyway.

We definatly have the no friending campers on facebook rule, we don't have the no camper picture rule. In fact I didn't realize my old camp did have the no camper picture rule, which I am definatly breaking unknowningly.

When the parents sign up the cameprs they have to sign a release saying we can use a picture of their child for promotions, we also have the staff sign something that says we can use their pictures for promotions and that they can't ask for royalties. We never thought this would be a problem until last year when someone tried to tell us they're pictures of camp were theirs can we couldn't use them, even though we had set aside time for her to take the pictures during the summer, meaning we had paid her to take pictures of camp.

Last year though I had a camper want to download all his pictures onto a disc, so he could take more, so I let him use my computer, and then he let me take the pictures as long as I gave him credit (which I did).

Using staff and campers pictures makes it so much easier to make flyers and stuff for camp.

haha, way to go me- telling you about the no camper pics on facebook! Of course we are allowed to have pics, but just not posting them on FB. I have a pic of every one of my groups (except a couple that I forgot to take a pic before they left). Only camp/Camp Fire are allowed to put camper pics on the website, and in promo stuff.

Yeah, at the end of the summer we give pics of ours to the directors if we have some that we think they might want to use if we want to. They use our pics for the staff slideshow and some camper pics go in there and some they keep for brochure and such.

I am not friends with campers on facebook but I am friends with some of the campers older brothers/sisters who are over 18 and are on staff at camp. At camp we were allowed to take pictures of the campers but just as long as we used discresion and if they did wind up on facebook-- we were not allowed to use names or any identifing information like where they lived or if they are related to anyone on staff or related to a CIT

We have used Bunk1 and Bunknotes. I would not reccomend using either one. We had issues with uploading pictures due to our internet connection. Parents complained about the price and inability to always see the pictures.

I think that printing the emails with the games and graphics was a waste of time and ink. I would rather us use an email program that only prints text and does not cost the parents.

We used to use just an email account but then we started getting too many to sort, but likely not enough to make a job out of it unless it was like 2 hours a day. Now we use BunkNotes, which sorts it out for us since the parents put in what unit their kid is in. Parents can still send snail mail as well, so if they don't want to pay that extra 50 cents or whatever the difference is between a stamp and a bunk note. Since our kids are only here for a week it wouldn't amount to that much money for them. If they were there for a whole summer I suppose it could get expensive. We don't do the pictures thing so we haven't had issues with it.

I hate to bring this thread up again because I'm just too frustrated, but I need to.
If any of you have used Bunk1 I need your help. For some reason I can be in the "director's portal" and change whatever I want in the camp info, post a main page photo, set-up a photo tour, all this cool stuff to make the website look awesome. However, because Bunk1 thinks it's "too complicated" for parents to read a welcome message, I cannot actually publish those things in the summer season. So bascially, because of bunk1, our website looks like this:
http://www.bunk1.com/template/community.asp?form_camp_id=9473

when it is set up in the editing portal to look more like this:
http://owners.bunk1.com/owner_rpt/samples/home.html

You know - a nice, fluid, coherent website that a parent might want to look at and see what the camp facility is like, or read about what the camp has to offer or what the girls get to do all summer. Nope! Not available unless you call Bunk1 and ask them to specifically turn that on for you, and then "they'll have to re-write the parent letter and it will be more complicated."

Really? I don't think a parent who is opting to email their child anyway will have that hard of a time figuring out the website.

Sorry for my rant. Has anyone dealt with this before? Am I wrong to be annoyed? I've been spending hours on the editing site making this nice just to find out no one will see it unless I complain. Sorry I'm such a grump.

Uhm... I would just make a Wiki personally. I know at a lot of schools I've been in they give the teachers the option to make a website that is set up much like Bunk1 and most teachers just make a Wiki....
Maybe you could make a wiki or some other free website and link it to the bunk1 site?