Oh, how I love back to school! Not just because I have kids, I was a teacher, and can’t get enough school supplies from Target. Actually, those are exactly the reasons I love back to school. But this year, there is one more reason for real estate agents to get excited about back to school. Education.com wants to give you helpful hyperlocal school information for your real estate blog or Website via their brand new SchoolFinder Tools.
The first super cool SchoolFinder tool (couldn’t resist) that is bound to peak your interest is the SchoolFinder Widget . You’ll fully understand it’s coolness when you start customizing it. Name your widget, enter a city, state or zip and then set your colors and size to match and fit your blog. Education.com sets your preferences and generates the code that you will need to insert into your blog or Website.
The SchoolFinder Widget provides a Google map of the market area you select with red pins representing each school. Simply choose a red pin to access school information including school name, address, grade levels, and quick links to SchoolFinder profiles and reviews. The widget also provides a scrolling list of all schools in your selected market area, as well as a search feature.
Now if you would like a more custom school solution and you’re already some kind of real estate technology guru, then perhaps you’ll want to learn more about the SchoolFinder Web Service. If you’re looking for something that is fully integrated with your blog, broker Website, or other application, then consider gaining access to the comprehensive SchoolFinder database vi a web service. Click here to request an API key.
I had the opportunity to ask Seann Birkelund, VP of Business Development at Education.com, what he hoped agents would gain from these new tools.
When we built the SchoolFinder Tools, we recognized the increasing need among real estate agents to provide high-value, local information to their constituents and prospective clients. Neighborhood schools are an integral part of real estate and we hope that by eliminating the barriers that exist to accessing this information and making this information freely available, agents across the country will be able to offer more comprehensive information about the markets they serve directly on their own sites.
If you haven’t visited Education.com, check it out. It’s a resource where interested buyers can learn more about schools and become better informed before their big move. It’s also a community where parents can turn for educational resources on topics that affect their own children and school environments. Additionally, parents will find grade level activities to support and challenge their children’s education, and a wealth of good reading from talented educational writers.
If you have any questions about SchoolFinder tools, please contact Education.com at api-support@education.com.
About NikNik
Nik, this is great info. Perfect for community based sites. Another great MTO find!
Love that tip. I just added it to my blog and I can see that being very meaningful to my readers. Thanks so much!
Nik – It would help if I read your entire post!! It is possible to integrate to broker websites. Thanks!
Nik, thanks for awesome post. It's great to see our tools well received by the real estate community!
I think it is very important to not only inform people, but to educate them. If you truly are a good realtor, you will do everything in your power to educate the public so they can make educated decisions.
Nik, cool tool. I wonder if a broker site could use this as well. They don’t seem to have any licensing programs. Any ideas?
Back to SchoolFinder {seesmic_video:{"url_thumbnail":{"value":"http://t.seesmic.com/thumbnail/gycIUvDC3M_th1.jpg"}"title":{"value":"Back to SchoolFinder "}"videoUri":{"value":"http://www.seesmic.com/video/9DM3a4kVpr"}}}
NikNik – this is cute but not very functional. Most people don't search for schools this way. Many search property by School District first in my geographic area. I would love, love, love a Widget that let clients search by school district!!
Judy- I appreciate your perspective and you're right that it would be nice to add yet another search criteria to the widget. However, I think these SchoolFinder tools are more functional than you realize.
Most parents are not always familiar with the names of the school districts. In many cases they may be familiar with a school name, or are looking at the geographic location of their new home and schools that are nearby. Additionally, private schools would be excluded from that type of search.
If you enter a zip code into the SchoolFinder Widget, you are provided with a list of nearby school and pins on the map. Click on your school and an overview page opens with additional data (scores, teacher ratios, etc). (http://www.education.com/schoolfinder/us/california/dublin/dublin-elementary/) And if you like what you see, you can enter a new search (including district) from the left sidebar.
As an agent, you should have direct links to school districts on your blog/Website. Including links to any/all private schools in the area. This widget is just one more way (visually) to search for schools when you are comparing different homes in different locations. After all this is just a widget (a tool or feature offering a snapshot). If you want fully integrated school information on your site, consider the SchoolFinder API.
Thanks again for your input…I'll forward it to Seann at Education.com.
Judy, allowing users to set the widget by school district is a great idea. We'll definitely look to add this going forward. One of the reasons we didn't look to add this in the first release is that it can add several layers of complexity to the user experience and the design. For example, not all school districts in the area cover K-12, so in fact in order to get all the schools in the area covered, we would need to allow users to choose multiple school districts at the same time. Similarly, we have thought about this in terms of multiple neighboring zip codes as well. Thanks for the feedback.
Nik – I love the widget! I'm adding it to my AR blog and will be adding it to my new website and blog when they launch…
Seann and NikNik – I have added this widget to my blog. My sidebars are narrow so it could display better. It's pretty cool though. Looking forward to the upgrades that let's people search by school district. If it could be added to a page so that it could display in a larger format that would be good. Any plans for that feature?
Hi Judy, great news, we have been developing the capability to customize the SchoolFinder widget by school district so you will be able to show just the schools within a certain school district. Also, we added the capability for users to show schools within a county, so users can choose schools within a school district, city, zip code, or county. We will be launching these enhancements within the coming days, I'll be sure to let you know when they go live!
I agree that the widget looks better in a larger size so you can clearly see all schools in both the map and list view. Currently the user can make the widget as large as they would like if the page supports widgets. The other good news for you in particular is that we are creating a WordPress plugin so that you'll be able to insert a larger sized widget within your WordPress blog itself and not just the side column area!
Thanks again for your helpful ideas!
Thanks Kelly!
I'm so impressed with your quick response and willingness to make this school data as useful as possible for us. Good School and education information is so critical for many of my clients. Again, many thanks!