source: https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/ content-type: ai-context-data ai-purpose: structured-content-reference last-updated: 2026-04-22T17:24:05.666Z signaltoai-version: 1.0.25 # Steven's Coop Landing Page **Summary:** This case study highlights Stevens Cooperative School's successful implementation of Vidigami, a community media management platform, to streamline photo sharing and enhance community engagement. The platform replaced a decentralized photo management system, saving the school approximately 300 hours and improving storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising efforts. **Primary Topics:** Media Management, Photo Sharing, Community Engagement, Education Technology **Secondary Topics:** Onboarding Process, Privacy Concerns, Yearbook Creation, Faculty Engagement, Digital Marketing **Semantic Tags:** - case-study - webinar - community-media-management - photo-organization - school-marketing - parent-engagement - event-photo-sharing - student-experience - yearbook-creation - onboarding-process - faculty-training - blackbaud-integration - privacy-concerns - community-launch - tagging-system - media-management-tools - digital-engagement - student-journey-documentation - family-cooperative-education - fundraising-support **Key Facts:** - Stevens Cooperative School has 450 students and 120 faculty across two campuses. - The school saved approximately 300 hours by using Vidigami. - Over 26,000 photos were uploaded by teachers in the first year using Vidigami. - 75% of parents have logged into the system, with 30% using it weekly or daily. **Frequently Asked Questions:** **Q1:** What is Vidigami? **A1:** Vidigami is a community media management platform designed specifically for schools, allowing them to organize, find, and share photos with parents, students, and staff efficiently. **Q2:** How has Vidigami improved photo management at Stevens Cooperative School? **A2:** Vidigami streamlined the school's photo management by centralizing the process, addressing privacy concerns, and saving approximately 300 hours that were previously spent on organizing and sharing photos. **Q3:** What impact has Vidigami had on community engagement? **A3:** The platform has enhanced community engagement by providing families with access to a wealth of photos from school events, fostering conversations at home, and improving marketing and fundraising efforts. **Q4:** How did Stevens Cooperative School onboard Vidigami? **A4:** The onboarding process involved integrating Vidigami with Blackbaud, running a pilot program with select classes, and training faculty and parents on how to use the platform effectively. **Q5:** What are the privacy features of Vidigami? **A5:** Vidigami prioritizes privacy by allowing schools to manage consent levels for photos, ensuring that sensitive images are not shared publicly without permission. **Content Type:** case study **Content Intent:** inform **Target Audience:** Educators, school administrators, and parents interested in school media management solutions. **Authority Score:** 0.85 **Trust Indicators:** - Testimonials from school staff - Integration with established systems like Blackbaud - Community engagement through parent involvement --- CASE STUDY: YEAR ONE WITH VIDIGAMI AT STEVENS COOPERATIVE Watch Full Webinar [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#vid] FROM PHOTO OVERLOAD TO ORGANIZED BLISS WATCH THE HIGHLIGHT VIDEO https://vimeo.com/1088568526/93f4a7df4c?share=copy Skip to a section [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] This webinar introduces Vidigami, a community media management platform designed for schools, as a solution to organize and share photos with parents, students, and staff. Leah Docktor from Stevens Cooperative School shares their journey of adopting Vidigami to capture students’ experiences across two campuses and multiple buildings, addressing the challenges of a decentralized system with privacy concerns. The onboarding process involved a Blackbaud integration, a pilot program with select classes, and a community launch with faculty training and parent involvement through “Vidigami taggers.”   The platform streamlined processes like: * yearbook creation * event photo sharing * and image requests   Saving the school approximately 300 hours. Vidigami also enhanced community engagement by sparking conversations at home and providing content for marketing and fundraising efforts. The Q&A covers archiving, media support, and permission settings, highlighting Vidigami’s flexibility and granular control. WATCH THE FULL WEBINAR https://youtu.be/B3UnAaQ7Fkk Select a tab below to skip to that section. * Introduction * KEY POINT * Vidigami has been instrumental in helping manage storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising, despite limited staff resources. VIDEO (01:23) SUMMARY This section introduces the Vidigami platform and features a testimonial from Leah Docktor, Director of Marketing Communications at Stevens Cooperative School.  Renee Ramig welcomes attendees, explaining that Vidigami is a community media management platform designed for schools to help organize, find, and share photos with parents, students, and staff. Leah Docktor shares her experience, noting that Stevens Cooperative School is a progressive Pre-K3 through 8th grade school in New Jersey with two campuses, four buildings, 450 students, and 120 faculty and staff.  The school recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and operates with a small two-person marketing and communications department. Leah emphasizes that Vidigami has been instrumental in helping them manage storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising, despite limited staff resources. Read Transcript RENEE RAMIG Welcome to our webinar today. Several of you here are already using Vidigami. But there’s some of you that we might be brand new to. So Vidigami is a community media management platform that’s designed for schools. Vidigami makes it easier for you to organize and find photos. Which is why, probably a lot of you are here because you’re looking for that solution. But we also allow easily for you to share all of those great memories with the people who care about it most, your parents and your students, and all of your staff. LEAH DOCKTOR My name is Leah, I am the Director of Marketing Communications at Stevens Cooperative School. This is my 4th year in this role, and my 6th at the school. We are a progressive Pre. K. 3, through 8th grade school in New Jersey. Last year we celebrated our 75th anniversary, but we are unique in that we have 2 campuses, 4 buildings, and only a 2 person Marcom department. We have lots of stories to capture and not many people to do it. Capturing the stories of 450 students and 120 faculty and staff members is definitely no easy feat. But Vidigmai has really helped us, and really has urged us to rethink our approach to storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising efforts. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Journey * KEY POINTS * Centralized media management * Focus on capturing student journeys * Addressed privacy and data loss concerns * Streamlined experience for families and staff VIDEO (03:10) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains why Stevens Cooperative School chose Vidigami. The school was drawn to Vidigami’s ability to capture students’ entire journey, aligning with the school’s long-standing emphasis on the “journey” concept, which is reflected in their end-of-year ceremony and yearbook. The fact that Vidigami had a Blackbaud integration was also a plus, as Stevens is a Blackbaud school. Before Vidigami, the school’s media management was decentralized, with teachers using Google Drive or Google Photo Albums, which posed privacy concerns and data loss risks when teachers left. Some teachers weren’t taking or sharing photos at all. Stevens Cooperative School sought a centralized platform that respected family privacy and streamlined the experience for families with multiple children across different grades, as different classes were using different platforms like Google Drive folders and Google Photo Albums. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR I want to take a step back in terms of discussing why we chose Vidigami. In our preliminary call with, I believe it was Renee. We were really sold by this idea that Vidigami would help us capture students’ entire journey throughout all of their years at Stevens, now at Stevens. This idea of journey, or the journey has been part of our school language for decades. It’s the name of our end of year ceremony. It’s the name of our yearbook publication. It has been a major part of the revision of our recruitment tools the past couple of years. So we heard the journey. And we were like, we’re speaking the same language is fantastic. Because we have 4 buildings and 2 campuses. We really wanted to find a tool that would allow us to align those experiences and provide a window into everything that is happening in terms of school culture and community and belonging and because there was a Blackbaud integration that was definitely an added bonus. Because we are a Blackbaud school. Now to give you a little glimpse into what it was like before Vidigami. I think the easiest way to explain this was that it was really a faculty free for all at Stevens. We didn’t have a centralized platform. We had several teachers who had worked at the school for years. We’re here when the school first started using the Google App, Google education suite. And they were very used to just uploading pictures to their drive and sharing images with families that way. We had some newer users who were using the Google photo albums to share with families. My hot tip, if you don’t know this is that because it’s not part of the education suite. There are definitely some privacy issues with using Google photo albums, especially for photos of children. And another big challenge was if you were a teacher who was using Google photo albums to house all of your media content if you left the school, your Google Photo album was deleted with your account. So I was working very closely with our tech department to export all of that content before they left, and make sure that it was archived in a better way. Then we also had teachers who either weren’t taking pictures or were taking pictures and weren’t sending them to us. And we really just wanted every family in the school to have a window into what was happening when their kids were gone for such a big portion of the day. And so, in terms of our requirements, we wanted one centralized platform. We definitely wanted a tool that respected family privacy, especially with the social media landscape constantly evolving. This is something that we really prioritize as an institution. We also really wanted to streamline the experience for families with multiple children. So like I mentioned, you may be a parent with a 1st grade student whose teacher is using Google drive folder. You might be a parent of a 5th grade student, same family. But that class uses an album. So just giving everyone easier access to all of the amazing media that we create at Stevens. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Onboarding * KEY POINTS * Quick setup with Blackbaud integration * Pilot program with teachers from each division * Migrated existing content * Gathered feedback for improvements * Smooth launch with enthusiastic parent ambassadors VIDEO (03:16) SUMMARY Stevens Cooperative School was able to implement Vidigami efficiently after receiving budget approval for the 2024-2025 school year. The process began in January, with the team setting up their organization on the platform, creating different user types, and immediately integrating Vidigami with Blackbaud, their student information system. This integration automatically created user profiles for all students, parents, faculty, and staff, making the transition seamless. To ensure the platform met the community’s needs, the school launched a pilot program. They selected one head teacher from each of their three divisions—early childhood (Pre-K3 to kindergarten), lower school (1st to 4th grade), and middle school (5th to 8th grade)—and created class album pages for each. These teachers received account creation support and training. The school also migrated all existing content from the current academic year (September to early January) into Vidigami, so parents could find all relevant media in one place. The pilot allowed families to experience the new platform, provide feedback, and help the school refine the process before a full launch. By the time Vidigami was rolled out school-wide in August, about 65 parent ambassadors were ready to support the transition. The setup process, including Blackbaud integration and page creation, was very fast—most steps were completed within 30 minutes, even with the extra detail involved in piloting. This careful, community-focused approach ensured a smooth and successful adoption of Vidigami across the school. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR We were very fortunate to have this approved in our budget for the 2024-2025 year. So as soon as this was approved for us last January we kicked into high gear. We created our organization on the platform and did all of our account set up in terms of creating different user types. And we also immediately did our Blackbaud integration. And that Blackbaud integration essentially means user profiles were created for all of our students, parents, faculty, and staff, who were already part of our student information system, and so that just made it very easy and seamless in terms of our transition. And that allowed us to do a pilot. And we are big fans of pilots at Stevens, especially, just like testing a tool and making sure it’s the right thing for our community and giving families an opportunity to have a voice in terms of what their experience at the school is like. So what we did was identify one head teacher and each of our 3 divisions. So those are early childhood, which is Pre. K. 3 to kindergarten, lower School, which is 1st through 4th grade and middle school, which is 5th through 8th grade. We created a page for their class album. And then we did some account, creation and training with those very willing and able teachers. We’re super appreciative that they signed on to do this pilot with us. Another thing we did was migrate all of their existing school year content because it was in the middle of our academic year. We wanted everything, from, you know, September to early January in the platform. So that parents only had to look in one place for all of that content. And then we launched the pilot with those 3 classes. So to see these 3 steps on this slide. It was so amazing for us to have a chance to pilot it, to make all of these steps really come to life. It was a chance for families to try something new to be part of, you know, innovating and and just curating a new type of experience, and also just a chance to give us feedback on the process. What can we do to make it easier when we launch a school wide, different things like that? And then we were very fortunate to essentially have about 65 ambassadors for Vidigami. When we launched school wide in August of this past year.   RENEE RAMIG  Can you let me know, Leah, about? How long did it take you to get set up with Vidigami to the point where you were able to do the launch, the internal school part.   LEAH DOCKTOR That’s a great question. So the Blackbaud integration was super fast. Just in terms of the setup. The categories and pages could be created in a matter of seconds, and because we just had very limited content. We only gave the parents who were part of the pilot access to the pages for their classes specifically. And so that is a level of piloting detail that you don’t necessarily need to do if you wanted to replicate this at your school, but even just like those steps, making it a bit more intricate for us, were done like within 30 min. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Community Launch * KEY POINTS * Organized launch * Parent volunteers: “Vidigami taggers.” * Smooth transition: Easy adoption of the platform. VIDEO (02:55) SUMMARY For the community launch of Vidigami, Stevens Cooperative School customized the platform to mirror the school’s structure by creating four main categories: * auxiliary programs and athletics, * class pages, * events and experiences, * and an internal category accessible only to select administrators.   Each homeroom received its own class page, and event pages were set up in advance for all scheduled events for the upcoming school year. For events occurring across multiple campuses, such as the 5th and 6th grade Science Expo held in both Hoboken and Jersey City, separate albums were created within the event page for each location. A unique aspect of Stevens’ approach is its status as a family cooperative, where every family is assigned a school job to foster engagement and bridge the gap between home and school. For the Vidigami launch, a new role called “Vidigami taggers” was introduced, allowing families to tag individuals in photos, similar to the experience on Facebook. This feature was met with enthusiasm and nostalgia from parents. The school was mindful of the significant change this platform represented, as many families were accustomed to using Google Photo Albums or viewing limited photos on Instagram. To avoid overwhelming users, the platform was set up so that parents would primarily see their own child’s class page upon logging in, along with access to relevant auxiliary programs and event pages. This approach ensured that families received only pertinent information and could explore additional content, such as future events or programs, at their own pace. The goal was to create an internal social network that was intuitive, engaging, and tailored to each family’s experience. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So in terms of our community launch, you can set Vidigami up to reflect the structure of your school in a million different ways. The way we approached this was creating 4 main categories which were auxiliary programs and athletics, class pages, events and experiences. And then an internal category that only me and a handful of other administrators have access to. So what we did to prepare for the current school year was, make a class page for each home room, and then, by the time we were setting this up to kick off the September 2024 school year, we had already created pages for all of our events that had been scheduled. You can edit the dates, and if it’s an event that, for example, takes place across two different buildings like tonight, for example, we have our 5th and 6th grade. Science expo one in Hoboken and one in Jersey City. We create an album for each campus. Within that event page I’ll go into further detail about how we launch this with faculty and staff in a few slides. But I also want to highlight something that’s a bit unique to Stevens, but could definitely be replicated at other institutions. And so we are unique in that we are a family cooperative, and for us that means every family in the school has a job, and that job could be as big as planning the gala, which is tomorrow night or holding the door open at our spring concert next Tuesday, and it’s a really great way to kind of bridge the gap between school and home, and also just stay or keep parents as engaged and involved as possible. And so we created a new job for this year, and they are our Vidigami taggers, because, like Rene mentioned. You can tag anyone in Vidigami, and families were really excited. I think maybe a bit nostalgic, because they remembered going to Facebook albums 15 years ago and tagging all of their friends and family. It’s really the same experience, and it’s very easy to do. And another big key aspect about the community launch is giving relevant information to the relevant people to manage the user experience. This was a big change for our families who many of them were just used to Google photo albums, or seeing a few pictures on Instagram. Essentially inviting them into an internal social network was a huge change. So we didn’t want them to log in and be overwhelmed with 30 homeroom pages, tons of event and experience folders. So if I’m a parent of a Pre. K. 3 student, I log in. I see my child’s Pre. K, 3 class page, and that’s really like my main event. But I also have access to the auxiliary programs, to the events and experiences. If I want a taste of what’s to come in the future for my child. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Face Tagging * KEY POINTS * Easy face tagging * Parents can tag their kids * AI + manual tagging = accurate IDs VIDEO (03:09) SUMMARY Leah Docktor highlights the benefits of Vidigami’s tagging feature, emphasizing how it simplifies the process of identifying individuals, especially with the school’s growing population. The Blackbaud integration is crucial because it pre-populates names, eliminating spelling errors and empowering families to tag their own children. This is particularly helpful for families with similar-looking siblings, where the system might confuse them. Tagging is user-friendly; users simply start typing a name, and suggestions appear. As an administrator, Leah can view all photos tagged with her and use the “Is this me?” tab to confirm or reject tags. This feature allows for multiple selections, enabling quick approval or rejection of tags without reviewing each photo individually. Renee Ramig adds that schools can choose who has tagging permissions. Vidigami only allows tagging with users already in the system (via Blackbaud in Stevens’ case). To address issues like similar-looking siblings or young children whose appearance changes rapidly, families can confirm or deny suggested tags, improving accuracy. Vidigami’s system recognizes faces in photos, but it may miss some due to obstructions like goggles or poor image quality. The platform allows manual face selection for tagging in such cases. The system combines manual tagging with optional AI facial recognition and parent engagement to maximize tagging accuracy. This multi-faceted approach ensures that as many students as possible are correctly identified in photos. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR To talk more about tagging, you could tell that this is me at an event on the right side, because I’m not wearing my glasses, but tagging is awesome. It’s made our lives so much easier. Our school is growing. We’re in a very fortunate position to continue to grow annually, and we have a lot of names and faces to learn and match. So the Blackbaud integration was really crucial here, because all of the names were pre-populated. I didn’t have to worry about spelling or anything like that, it really empowers families to take ownership in terms of you know, putting the onus on them to tag their kids. We have kids who have families who have kids in 1st and 3rd grade. But those kids look exactly alike. And so sometimes the system thinks they’re the same. The tagging is so easy. You just start typing in their name, and it pre pops up. But this is really what it looks like. If you go onto any user profile in Vidigami as an admin member like I am. So you can see all of the pictures tagged with me there. I am on the right side talking about Hanukkah with our Pre. K. 4 class. And then if I click the: Is this me? tab, a different tab will pop up, and that’s what the right side of the page looks like. And what’s great about this is, you don’t need to go individually through every single photo. If you know that everything is the user that you want to tag, you can do a multiple selection and approve all of them or decline them.   RENEE RAMIG As Leah said, you can choose to allow everybody or just key people to also tag others. So you get to decide. You can only tag with users that have been added to the system in Leah’s case that’s through Blackbaud. So there’s no misspellings in there, but because of the fact that you’ve got siblings that look alike. You’ve got young students that it seems like they change what they look like from day to day, especially those, you know, like preschool threes. Rather than miss tagging, auto miss tagging, we give families the ability to say, Yes, this is my child or no, this is not, and it leads to much higher accuracy of the photos that are added to their portfolio. So with many photos that are uploaded, and you’re going to get a lot, especially if you’re opening this up to parents being, you know, uploaders, and you’ve got all your teachers is you often are going to get photos where it’s not going to recognize that there’s even a face in the photos. Our system will recognize faces if it if it can tell, it’s a face. So you can see in this photo. It’s recognizing 2 faces. But there’s a 3rd person in here, here because of goggles. It’s only recognizing one of the 2 faces. These 3 photos it’s not recognizing at all. So our system allows you to literally go in and click on the face and be able to auto tag. But if we were relying solely on automated facial recognition, it would be missing all of these students. So we combine manual tagging with an AI system that’s optional schools can turn it on, which Leah’s school did as well as parent engagement. To ensure tagging is as close to 100% as you can get. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Timeline * KEY POINTS * Planned launch: Started before school began * Informed families: Consent and platform details * Organized groups: Easy classroom navigation * Trained staff: Fun photo upload assignment * Successful launch: Over 900 photos on day one! VIDEO (02:53) SUMMARY To ensure a smooth Vidigami launch, Stevens Cooperative School planned their rollout by working backwards from the first day of school, September 3, 2024.  In early August, they sent an introductory email to all families, announcing the new platform and informing them about the option to change their child’s photo consent level.  Once families submitted their consent preferences, the school assigned these levels to each child’s Vidigami profile. On the backend, the team set up classroom groups so that families would only see pages relevant to their own children, rather than being overwhelmed by all classroom pages.  This decision was made to streamline the user experience and enhance privacy, though the platform allows for different configurations. A key part of the launch was a dedicated session with faculty and staff during the school’s annual August meetings. All staff were asked to bring their laptops and phones, log into Vidigami, and download the mobile app.  The process was smooth, with only a few minor login issues that were quickly resolved. Staff were pleasantly surprised to find that all photos from the previous school year (2023-2024) had already been uploaded and were available to view. Following advice from Renee, the school gave faculty a fun assignment: upload photos of their classrooms or take selfies in their spaces. This ensured that when families logged in for the first time, there was already engaging content available, making the platform immediately interactive and welcoming. The launch was highly successful—on the first day of school alone, 932 images were uploaded, capturing moments from student arrivals, classroom activities, and families experiencing the start of the new year.  This approach helped create a vibrant, content-rich environment from day one, making the transition to Vidigami both smooth and meaningful for the school community. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR We really worked backwards from our 1st day of school. So we started on September 3rd of 2024, and we worked backwards in terms of which communications families already receive, what we need to add in different things like that. So in early August we sent an introductory email to all families, letting them know that we were going to be using a new platform. And alerting them of the fact that they can change their child’s consent level if they wish to do that so once we received consent levels from families we went in and could assign those consent levels to their child’s profile in Vidigami, and we were also working on the back end to set up groups for classrooms. So, like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t want a family to log in and see 30 different classroom pages. We wanted them to just see what was applicable to their child. This is a decision we made as a school for several reasons, but you do not have to have that level of security on your end. And then what was really fun is our session with faculty and staff. So for our opening meetings each August we always have a session. We as marketing communications, always host a session with faculty and staff, but we knew we had some work to do in terms of launching Vidigami, so we told everyone to come with their laptops and phones. We had every single faculty and staff member present log into the platform. We also had all of them download the mobile app. If they had a smartphone and log in that way. It was pretty seamless. There were like maybe 3 people who had login issues. And Renee addressed those right away. But it was fun, because when people logged in they had a surprise waiting for them. And all of the 2023, 2024 photos had already been uploaded so they could see that. Another huge thing I want to shout Renee out, for here is she gave us the great advice to give some faculty homework, and it was fun homework. It was upload. Some photos of your classroom, maybe take a selfie in your book nook and upload them to your class page, so that when families receive their invitation to log into Vidigami for the 1st time they had some content waiting for them, and were really ready and prepared to interact with the platform. Once the school year officially kicked off. and we think we were very successful, because the 1st day of school was September 3rd and I just checked our stats. 932 images were uploaded on that 1st day. Some of them were from, you know, my team and I running around taking pictures of arrival with our balloons. A lot of them are pictures from classrooms. Students like getting used to their new space for that year. Maybe some of our youngest learners, with their parents and trepidatiously entering the classroom, but we were able to capture it all and share it, and it was really special to have that change for this year. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Faculty & Staff * KEY POINTS * Vidigami boosted faculty and staff engagement * Rapid adoption: Thousands of photos uploaded * Easy participation with Media Request Link * Sharing authentic classroom photos VIDEO (03:03) SUMMARY Leah Docktor reflects on how quickly faculty and staff adapted to Vidigami, contrasting it with the much longer adjustment period typically required for adults to get used to new systems. Unlike the three years it can take for adults to adapt to a new school schedule, Vidigami was adopted rapidly and enthusiastically by the school community. This is evidenced by the impressive volume of content: over 26,000 photos were uploaded by teachers to class pages in a single year, and nearly 20,000 more were added by other community members to auxiliary programs and event pages. Leah shares specific examples, such as a selfie uploaded by the head of school at a volleyball game and a second-grade teacher, Bianca, who uploaded nearly a thousand photos before going on maternity leave. These examples illustrate the high level of engagement and participation from faculty and staff. A key feature that supports this engagement is Vidigami’s media request link. Instead of simply providing a folder for photo uploads, the media request link acts as a call to action, inviting faculty and staff to actively contribute photos for specific events or needs. For instance, during the annual spring day of service, the school sent out a media request link to encourage teachers to upload photos from their classrooms and onsite locations, ensuring comprehensive coverage of the event. Renee Ramig adds that, compared to the previous practice of curating and selectively posting photos on social media, Vidigami allows for a much broader and more authentic sharing of classroom moments. While not every photo may be perfectly curated, parents now have a much deeper and more genuine window into their children’s daily experiences at school—something that curated social media posts cannot provide. This shift has made the platform especially valuable for families, as they get to see a fuller, more authentic picture of school life. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So I want to talk a bit about the faculty and staff impact. And I was thinking a lot about this this morning, because to go to tell a quick story. A couple of years ago we partnered with independent school management to revamp our students schedule, and I will never forget, because it’s something that my partner, Dean and I talk about a lot, but the consultant told us that for students it takes them 3 weeks to get used to a new schedule, and for adults it takes them 3 years pretty crazy when you think about it. And I want to say that Vidigami did not take 3 years for people to get used to, because over 26,000 photos have been updated, sorry, uploaded by teachers to their class pages this year. and an additional almost 20,000 have been uploaded by just other members of the community to auxiliary programs or events and experiences on the left side. This picture is actually a selfie that my head of school uploaded, he went to a volleyball game. We have one of our students in the back and 2 different families and their coach. and then Bianca is one of our second grade teachers who’s been at the school for years, and she’s actually on maternity leave now. But before she left she uploaded nearly a thousand photos this school year, from what her second graders were up to. Another great tool about Vidigami is the media request link. And so you know, for most of our teachers, we’re really grateful that they are just constantly capturing what’s happening and uploading. But. for example, yesterday we had our annual spring day of service. And so, as a reminder to faculty and staff, we sent an email out to all the faculty, reminding them that we cannot be in every classroom or at every onsite location at once, and we need their support taking photos. And so we sent the media request Link. which is different than just sending a folder that people can upload pictures to. It’s really also a call to action. It says, to like, drag and drop your pictures here, to add them to this folder. So it’s beyond, just like this is where you can dump everything. It’s really like an invitation for them to participate.   RENEE RAMIG Right. I just wanted to make a comment, especially the pictures on the right. So, Leah, when you were before you got Vidigami, you were posting on a social network, and you would select like you would curate photos. Correct. And right now you probably wouldn’t have curated those 4 photos. You may be curated one right? And so now the parents really get a look into their child’s classroom, and to see what’s going on at a level that you’re not going to get if your school is only posting on like Facebook or Instagram, or one of those. And so these might not be the best of the best for your school, but for parents these are the best of the best, because they get to see what’s really going on in the classroom.   Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Yearbook * KEY POINTS * Vidigami improves yearbook creation * Students find it faster and more engaging * Easy photo access enhances workflow VIDEO (01:15) SUMMARY Leah Docktor highlights the positive impact of Vidigami on the yearbook staff. The students were surprised and excited by the number of photos they were tagged in and were eager to use the platform. Previously, Leah had to compile content into folders for the students, but now they can log in and see everything immediately, which has significantly sped up the yearbook creation process. The students are enthusiastic about using the platform and frequently want to log back in. Currently, students only have viewing access, not uploading capabilities, though there is potential to expand access to include uploading in the future, especially for events like overnight trips. Giving students access to view content has greatly improved the yearbook team’s workflow. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR The student impact has been really interesting to observe, because we actually only give our Yearbook staff access to Vidigami. They, however, were in disbelief at the amount of pictures that have been taken of them have been tagged of them, and they were really excited to engage with everything that was on the platform to give an example of how we used to manage this in the past. What I would have to do is aggregate all of the content from the 4th grade that we had, and give them access to a folder. Now they just log in and see everything. It really expedited the process. And it’s made it really exciting for them, because they can see everything at a glance. What are the pictures that I think tell the best story for this yearbook page or this spread? so it’s been really special to have them logging into the platform, and I constantly have students who are like, I want to log back in. But I can’t remember my password. Please help me. So I think students are really excited about it right now. They don’t have access to upload pictures. It might be something that we explore in the future, especially for overnight trips and things like that. But right now giving them access to see everything is more than enough, and it’s been a huge help in terms of our workflow. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Content Overload * KEY POINTS * Content Overload *  Conversation Starters * Student’s Journey VIDEO (04:44) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains that one of the main challenges they aimed to address was content overload, particularly the difficulty of sharing large numbers of photos from school events with families. While social media platforms like Instagram allow only a limited number of photos per post, many more photos are taken at events, and previously there was no easy way to share all of them with families without complicated workarounds. With Vidigami, families can now access all event photos, which has led to high engagement—75% of parents have logged into the system, and over 30% of surveyed families use the platform weekly or daily. The rest typically log in monthly, often prompted by class news updates. There has also been interest from families in adding grandparents to the platform, and the school is considering expanding access in the future. Renee Ramig adds that Vidigami can be customized to include people beyond the immediate school community, such as professional photographers or non-staff coaches, to fit each school’s needs. Leah also notes that as children get older, they tend to share less about their school day with their families, but the photos on Vidigami have become valuable conversation starters at home. For example, parents can ask about specific activities shown in the photos, such as set building for a school musical or participating in a technology class project. These images help bridge the gap between school and home by giving families insight into their children’s experiences. Leah shares a personal story about a student who has been at the school since early childhood and is now graduating. By uploading archival content to Vidigami, she can see the student’s entire journey at the school in one place, making the experience especially meaningful. Renee adds that Vidigami also makes it easier for parents to create graduation montage boards, as all the necessary photos are readily available in the student’s portfolio, saving time and effort compared to searching through old physical photos at home. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR I meant to say this in the beginning. But another key pain point we were trying to solve was this idea of content overload and what you can accomplish in a social media post or not. So last week, for example, we had our 3rd and 4th grade musical. and we can post, you know, 20 pictures in an Instagram slideshow. And it’s great. And it’s wonderful. But what about those other 250 pictures we took? There wasn’t really an easy way unless we were uploading a Facebook album and making sure the media opt out. Kids weren’t included and things like that to get that content to families. Now they can see it all, and they’re excited to log in and see what’s new. But as of the end of last month 75% of all of the parents enrolled at Stevens have logged into the system, and we recently administered a media and communication survey. Over 30% of families who have completed the survey said that they log into the platform weekly or daily. The rest are logging in monthly, typically prompted by our class news that teachers send out bimonthly and an interesting thing that happened when we launched is we got a lot of requests from families to add grandparents to the platform. So we know that this is something that we may want to open up in the future, and we know that we have the support from Renee to figure out the best way to do that if we want to.   RENEE RAMIG Yeah, I just want to add that you know, schools can add people other than just their immediate community. We have many schools that add a professional photographer to it, non staff coaches. And so yes, we just work with you to make sure that Vidigami fits with what you need at your school.     LEAH DOCKTOR I’m excited to talk about this slide. I think that many people can probably relate to the fact that as the kids get older. They don’t want to tell you as much, or they’re like they had it. I had a good day. They don’t really want to share, and we’ve heard tidbits from families that you know these pictures have been a conversation starter. The dinner table is definitely more interesting. So, for example, I mentioned last week that our 3rd and 4th graders had their musical. It was finding Nemo. It was fantastic, but so this picture in the middle might just look like students painting a mural. But it’s actually students working on the set pieces for finding Nemo. And it really helps parents to ask questions like. What are you painting for the set? What are the props? Do you know all the songs? Do you know your lines? And then I have to give kudos to my associate Director Dean, who took photo on the right, which is probably my favorite photo this school year, you can tell there’s an age gap here, but so we have our 8th grade student, Asha, who, as part of a technology class assignment, coded a game, and the class actually invited some younger students in to test the games. And so this is a beautiful moment that Dean captured a great conversation point for Asha and her parents to talk about what that experience was like having, like a user use, something that she designed, but also a really cool option for this younger student to tell her family. I got to sample and test out a game today that an older student designed and built in a class like, I’m excited to do that one day. So it’s really a great way to bridge that gap again between school and home. To bring it back to this idea of capturing the student journey. I am the most sentimental person ever, and I always cry at graduation. But this is a family. We don’t play favorites, but we love this family. The parents are super involved, and he has been at the school since we had a twos program that we no longer have, and he’s graduating 8th grade in a couple of weeks, and I’ve been spending a lot of time putting some archival content onto Vidigami. And now I can see every step of his journey at Stevens throughout the past few years. So it’s really special to really see this idea of capturing a student’s entire journey at the school in one place, because we’ve brought it to life so easily.   RENEE RAMIG Yeah. I just wanna say, you, do you see how emotional Leah is? Now, imagine the parent looking at these photos of yeah. That’s amazing also at 7 Hills, and I think you have something similar at your school. We asked each parent of our graduating 8th graders to create an actual Physical Montage board, and I remember the 1st year we had Vidigami. They’re like, oh, this saved me so much time because they’re not trying to go through their drawers in their house and their boxes to find the photos, because, you know, the majority of them were all in their students portfolio that they just downloaded to create the montage of so yes. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Advancement * KEY POINTS * Enhances family engagement * Streamlines media management * Empowers marketing and admissions * Simplifies event photo sharing * Powers versatile digital displays VIDEO (05:03) SUMMARY Leah Docktor describes the significant impact Vidigami has had on various departments at the school, especially in advancement, marketing, admissions, and fundraising. She emphasizes that everyone in the school contributes to student retention and fundraising, and Vidigami supports this by making it easier to capture and share important moments that foster family engagement and satisfaction. The platform has streamlined the school’s media ecosystem, allowing staff to be more present and effective in their roles without needing to be everywhere at once. For admissions and external marketing, Vidigami has made it much easier for staff to access and use photos. The admissions director, who previously had to request specific images, can now quickly find and use any photos needed for presentations or info sessions. The digital marketing firm also benefits from direct access to the platform, enabling them to create new ads efficiently without relying on staff to select and send images. In development and fundraising, Vidigami has simplified the process of sharing event photos, such as for Grandparents and Special Friends Day. Previously, sharing these photos involved multiple steps, including taking, editing, uploading, and posting to social media, while also managing privacy concerns. Now, teachers can upload photos directly, and public slideshows can be easily created and shared via a link, with privacy settings automatically respected. This has eliminated many manual steps and made sharing content with families and the public much more efficient. Renee Ramig adds that public slideshows are useful for both external marketing and internal communication, as they can be shared in newsletters or embedded in digital signage around the school. Updating these slideshows is simple, and they can be displayed on monitors in school lobbies or other areas, keeping content fresh and engaging for families and visitors. Leah notes that the office manager for the youngest students enjoys updating the digital displays each week, capturing the joyful atmosphere of the early childhood building and giving parents something new to see each day at drop-off. Renee shares an example from her previous school, where a middle school student council member was responsible for taking and uploading photos each week, ensuring that even middle school activities were regularly featured on digital displays. This approach increased the visibility of middle school events and gave students ownership of documenting their school experience. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So departmental impact. I really want to talk about advancement. And I went to the 1st P.D. conference I went to when I started working at Stevens was the Case-NAIS Conference and I walked away from that conference with this idea that every single person in the school plays a role in retention, and every single person in the school is a fundraiser. Vidigami really drives that home for us. We can’t be in all the places at once, even though we really would like to be. We know that those moments at drop off, or dismissal, or whatever it is, are really crucial for retention and family happiness and Vidigami, just, you know, helps again bring those conversations to life, add some color to the day, and it’s just been really helpful in terms of like the entire media ecosystem at our school. In terms of external marketing and the work we do with enrollment management and admissions. Our admissions director has been at the school for 30 years. She has seen every type of picture known to man she loves. She’s like, I want to update my info session slides for next week, like I know exactly where to look. It’s eliminated that step of her making a media request for, like 7 grade pictures of this this and this like the not that we wouldn’t support that, but like there is just an easy way for her to sift through pictures herself, or if she wants a picture of a specific kid or something like she can search and find that our digital marketing firm also has access to Vidigami. I will say they’ve definitely been really on it this year in terms of seeing new content we upload and sending us new ads to review because they have access all of our pictures, instead of again having that middle man saying, Let’s use these 5. In terms of development and fundraising.I want to talk a little bit about public slideshows, so we have grandparents and special friends day every fall, and there were so many steps in years past, including the steps I was taking to run around the school and get a picture of every kid and their guest. Then we would import, edit, upload the pictures, make a Facebook album, share it out like so many steps have been eliminated because we can upload things to the platforms. Teachers can upload things to the album. We can share a public link to this slideshow very easily. Once we create the collection. And you know for kids who do have those privacy concerns. They’re automatically hidden. And it’s just like an extra step that’s eliminated because we don’t have to worry like, oh, did we include that picture of that kid who has a no-public release or things like that? So it’s really just been super impactful. And we’re super grateful.     RENEE RAMIG I just wanted to mention. So public slideshows is for your forward facing, like you said your external marketing. But this allows you to create a link so you can share it in a newsletter. So what many schools do is you know, you rolled it out to parents pretty quickly, but some schools won’t roll it out to parents right away. So you can use that public slideshow link to share with your parents, too. For example, in your weekly parent newsletters. We also have, just with a click, an embed code. If you don’t know what an embed code is. That’s okay. But a lot of things like digital signage, even if whether it’s the big one outside or just a small monitor that runs when you enter your school lobby. You can do that through a slideshow here. And literally, it’s 1 click. And now you’re able to just go in and change those photos in that public slideshow that plays on your digital signage signs and or monitors.   LEAH DOCKTOR Our office manager at the building where our youngest students are is so excited to update those every week because there is really a sense of joy in an early childhood building that is so fun to capture. And it’s just exciting, like those parents are still walking in every morning and dropping those kids off directly to their classroom. So they pass that monitor, and they’re excited to see what’s new.   RENEE RAMIG I just want to make a comment that at the school I was at, which was 7 Hills in Walnut Creek, California. We a lot of times middle school. You don’t get as many photos as you do in preschool, and K, and one. So one of our student Council members in 8th grade. The position was historian, and their role was each week they needed to take a minimum of 10 photos of things happening in the middle school. They went in and they uploaded the collection. So when anybody walked into our middle school building, whether it was a current parent, a prospective parent. Even students will see brand new photos every week that are playing on the Monitor that welcomes them when they walked into middle school. And we put that as a student responsibility. So they, you know, they were the ones uploading it and choosing what they felt were the the key things that were happening in middle school that week. So that was a way that we got more middle school photos. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Success Metrics * KEY POINTS * Significant Time Savings * Improved Efficiency * Strategic Focus * Data-Driven Projects * Historical Preservation VIDEO (03:31) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains that Vidigami has significantly reduced time-consuming tasks for the school, saving about 300 hours this year alone in three main areas: yearbook creation, sharing event photos, and responding to image requests. Previously, these tasks required a lot of manual effort, but now, with everything organized and searchable by school year on Vidigami, staff and families can easily find and access photos themselves. This has made sharing event photos more efficient and eliminated the need to worry about where to upload or how to distribute them, as everyone can simply log in to see what’s happening at the school. Leah also highlights that the platform has freed up staff time for more strategic and meaningful work. For example, Dean, who was promoted to Associate Director of Strategic Communications, can now focus on important projects like crisis management and launching new initiatives, such as a free tuition program, because the content management system keeps everything organized and accessible. The department has also been able to conduct more in-depth, data-driven projects, such as running eight parent focus groups, since they no longer spend hours searching for photos. Additionally, Vidigami has helped the school preserve and share its history. During the school’s 75th anniversary, an archives committee digitized historical photos and documents, which are now stored and accessible on Vidigami, including images from as far back as 1946. This allows the school to tell both current and historical stories in a flexible and engaging way, supporting community engagement in ways that fit the unique needs of the school. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So I took a look. And I want to talk about 3 major time sucks that have really been eliminated with Vidigami and given us about 300 h back this year, and this isn’t all the time we’ve gotten back. But this is a big chunk of it. So first is Yearbook, which I’ve spent a little bit of time talking about before, the next is sharing event. Photos. Yes, we’ll continue to do that roundup post on Instagram, so that our prospective families and any of our followers can see what’s going on. But we don’t have to worry so much about where we upload things. Are they going to see it. It’s a great tool for people to just log in and see what’s happening in the school. And another big time suck has been researching and providing images on requests. I actually, just before this call, got an email from an office manager who was looking for a picture from coincidentally, our journey ceremony last year, and I was like, they’re all on Vidigami. Go here and you’ll find them. But once people become accustomed enough to the platform they know where they need to look. There’s a search feature like it is wonderful and easy, and it’s organized by school year. I also want to talk about how I’m very excited because we promoted Dean to Associate Director of Strategic Communications for this school year, and I will say that having this content management system has really freed up a lot of his time to do a lot of really thoughtful and meaningful work for the department. Everything from crisis management and making sure we have all of our systems and policies and structures in place, as well as we launched a free tuition program this year. I don’t think we would have been able to do it as successfully if we didn’t have a tool in place for us to pull photo content and just keep everything organized and at bay. And it’s also just really opened up a lot of time for our department to do some really thoughtful like data driven projects. So for several years we had been doing a parent satisfaction survey. This year. We actually did 8 focus groups throughout the winter and the spring. And so we’re really excited to be able to dig into that data because we’re not spending hours and hours looking for pictures on the Google drive anymore. And so this screenshot is from 4 days ago. I can already tell you that this summary with media uploaded has increased since then. But this is just a glimpse of what we’ve been able to accomplish on Vidigami since we launched. And then to wrap up. I think I really just want to share this idea. That community engagement looks different at every single school, and Vidigami gives you the flexibility to do that in a bunch of different ways. Like I mentioned at the beginning, we celebrated our 75th anniversary as a school during the last year, and prior to that we had an archives committee of parents who was helping go through historical pictures and documents. And we were like, Okay, we organize them now they’re digitized. And for a little while we were in a holding pattern. We were like, Well, where do they go? But now I can log into Vidigami. And I have pictures from 1946 and 1947, before the school was even incorporated in there. And so it’s really special, because Vidigami lets us , tell current stories as they’re unfolding, but also really tells the history and the story of the school in a special way. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] * Q&A * KEY POINTS * Archiving for Organization * Direct Video Uploads and Embeds * Granular Permissions * Controlled Media Uploads VIDEO (05:03) SUMMARY This Q&A section covers several topics related to using Vidigami, including archiving, media types, and permissions. Regarding archiving, Renee Ramig explains that while Vidigami doesn’t offer a simple bulk upload feature, this is intentional. The process of manually archiving photos allows schools to clean up messy archives, eliminate duplicates, and organize content effectively. Leah Docktor adds that this process helps identify and catalog the most crucial content, rather than just dumping everything in. The discussion then shifts to media types supported by Vidigami. Renee clarifies that the platform supports images (JPEGs and PNGs) and direct video uploads up to 1.4 GB. It also supports embedding videos from platforms like YouTube or Vimeo by simply grabbing and pasting the link, which makes the video appear as if it’s hosted directly on Vidigami. Mandy Chan emphasizes that the media size limit is in place to give administrators control over who can upload large files. This allows schools to restrict uploading large videos to specific users, such as teachers. The YouTube and Vimeo embedding feature allows schools to easily add content already stored on those platforms, which can be unlisted when no longer needed publicly, while still being indexed within Vidigami. Renee highlights the granular permission settings within Vidigami. Schools can customize permissions for different users, such as giving specific parents extra tagging permissions or granting temporary upload access to parents attending field trips. This flexibility allows schools to tailor Vidigami to their specific needs. Leah adds that her school has a photo and video committee of parents who have upload access to all events. They also grant temporary upload access to parents who have taken great photos at specific events or allow them to send the photos to the school for uploading. Finally, Mandy thanks Leah for sharing her experiences, and Renee thanks everyone for attending. Read Transcript RENEE RAMIG I started the question about archiving, and as Leah said, Yes, you can archive, and it is a manual process, but we help you set up great workflows and a lot of schools find that you’re able to clean up, because often your archives are very messy. They’re in multiple places. You have tons of duplicates. So we don’t offer a just Hey, take this whole folder and let’s just drop it in, because usually the cleaning process is really helpful and gets it really organized. And then you’ve got this really clean, nice archive to share in Vidigami. What did you find, Leah, when you were doing your archives.     LEAH DOCKTOR Yeah. So I mean, we’re very lucky that we’ve done so much digitizing work. And it was interesting because I wasn’t here when the school was planning for its 70th anniversary 7 years ago, but there were pictures sprawled down the table, and our admissions director was like this girl graduated in this year. So this picture has to be from sometime in the nineties. But our archiving piece has been very seamless, I would say. I think the bigger lift is more on our end to make sure things are accurately tagged in terms of like which school year. They were taken from the early years of Stevens, are also not murky, but like a lot of the students who were enrolled at the school when it was first founded, were children of faculty members at Stevens Institute of Technology, which is a university in Hoboken. And so we have a lot of pictures of those faculty kids, you know, like running around a college campus. We know that they were students because we have documentation, but like those pictures aren’t necessarily from school, but they still help tell our story. So it’s really also about, I think Renee made a great point in terms of like duplicates, messy photos, especially a lot of scanners automatically scan like the 1st version and then an enhanced version, and then everything gets uploaded. So I will say it is a good way to start going through your archives and really attacking like what is the most crucial content you want, digitized and cataloged, instead of just dumping everything in.   RENEE RAMIG So the next question, I see is, what does all media mean? So Vidigami supports images, of course, Jpegs and Pngs. And we also support videos up to directly upload it up to 1.4 GB. If you don’t know what that means, it’s totally okay. We’ve got schools uploading videos from, you know, 10 to 15 seconds all the way up to 30 or 40 min directly into Vidigami. But we also support embedding a video. Again, it’s a super easy process. I don’t want you to be scared by the term embedding. But if you upload your video to either Youtube or Vimeo, you can literally just grab the link. You’ll put it in Vidigami, and it actually for the end users. It looks like it’s in Vidigami, but they’re actually watching it on Vimeo or Youtube.   MANDY CHAN And the comment I want to make around the media size, it’s really so that you have a lot of control over permissions of who can upload what size of media. You don’t want to let everybody upload. You know a 10 min video, you may only want that permission to be available to your teachers. And then, the Youtube and Vimeo is really to give you the ability to be able to easily add content that you’ve already got stored in in Youtube or Vimeo. But now you can unlist it when you no longer want it public, and it just all gets indexed within Vidigami.   RENEE RAMIG Our system is granular. So let’s say you create permissions for all your parents. But you’ve got some parents like Leah said that you want to do a lot of tagging, so you want to give them just those 10 parents, maybe extra permission to tag for this question. You’ve got 4 parents that are going on the field trip. So maybe all of your parents don’t have uploading permissions, but you can give those 4 parents uploading permissions. You could even invite just those 4 parents, even if the rest of the parents aren’t. Yes, using Vidigami. And you’re just sharing public slideshows so very granular. We can work with you on permissions that work best for your school. When we set up Vidigami for you.   LEAH DOCKTOR Yeah. And to add on to that, we another one of our cooperative jobs is we have a photo and video committee. So all of the parents that are on that committee have upload access to all of our. And events and experiences. I wish that I could like have them full time. Run around. It’s super helpful. And also like. Sometimes we’ll just get a parent who’s like, Hey? I took some great pictures at this event. I’d love to share them with the school, and like we can give them temporary access to upload, or they can just send them to us, and we can do it for them.     MANDY CHAN Thank you so much, Leah, for sharing your experience with everybody this year.     RENEE RAMIG Thank you for attending. Thank you, Leah, very much. Bye, everybody! Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINT * Vidigami has been instrumental in helping manage storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising, despite limited staff resources. VIDEO (01:23) SUMMARY This section introduces the Vidigami platform and features a testimonial from Leah Docktor, Director of Marketing Communications at Stevens Cooperative School.  Renee Ramig welcomes attendees, explaining that Vidigami is a community media management platform designed for schools to help organize, find, and share photos with parents, students, and staff. Leah Docktor shares her experience, noting that Stevens Cooperative School is a progressive Pre-K3 through 8th grade school in New Jersey with two campuses, four buildings, 450 students, and 120 faculty and staff.  The school recently celebrated its 75th anniversary and operates with a small two-person marketing and communications department. Leah emphasizes that Vidigami has been instrumental in helping them manage storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising, despite limited staff resources. Read Transcript RENEE RAMIG Welcome to our webinar today. Several of you here are already using Vidigami. But there’s some of you that we might be brand new to. So Vidigami is a community media management platform that’s designed for schools. Vidigami makes it easier for you to organize and find photos. Which is why, probably a lot of you are here because you’re looking for that solution. But we also allow easily for you to share all of those great memories with the people who care about it most, your parents and your students, and all of your staff. LEAH DOCKTOR My name is Leah, I am the Director of Marketing Communications at Stevens Cooperative School. This is my 4th year in this role, and my 6th at the school. We are a progressive Pre. K. 3, through 8th grade school in New Jersey. Last year we celebrated our 75th anniversary, but we are unique in that we have 2 campuses, 4 buildings, and only a 2 person Marcom department. We have lots of stories to capture and not many people to do it. Capturing the stories of 450 students and 120 faculty and staff members is definitely no easy feat. But Vidigmai has really helped us, and really has urged us to rethink our approach to storytelling, recruitment, retention, and fundraising efforts. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Centralized media management * Focus on capturing student journeys * Addressed privacy and data loss concerns * Streamlined experience for families and staff VIDEO (03:10) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains why Stevens Cooperative School chose Vidigami. The school was drawn to Vidigami’s ability to capture students’ entire journey, aligning with the school’s long-standing emphasis on the “journey” concept, which is reflected in their end-of-year ceremony and yearbook. The fact that Vidigami had a Blackbaud integration was also a plus, as Stevens is a Blackbaud school. Before Vidigami, the school’s media management was decentralized, with teachers using Google Drive or Google Photo Albums, which posed privacy concerns and data loss risks when teachers left. Some teachers weren’t taking or sharing photos at all. Stevens Cooperative School sought a centralized platform that respected family privacy and streamlined the experience for families with multiple children across different grades, as different classes were using different platforms like Google Drive folders and Google Photo Albums. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR I want to take a step back in terms of discussing why we chose Vidigami. In our preliminary call with, I believe it was Renee. We were really sold by this idea that Vidigami would help us capture students’ entire journey throughout all of their years at Stevens, now at Stevens. This idea of journey, or the journey has been part of our school language for decades. It’s the name of our end of year ceremony. It’s the name of our yearbook publication. It has been a major part of the revision of our recruitment tools the past couple of years. So we heard the journey. And we were like, we’re speaking the same language is fantastic. Because we have 4 buildings and 2 campuses. We really wanted to find a tool that would allow us to align those experiences and provide a window into everything that is happening in terms of school culture and community and belonging and because there was a Blackbaud integration that was definitely an added bonus. Because we are a Blackbaud school. Now to give you a little glimpse into what it was like before Vidigami. I think the easiest way to explain this was that it was really a faculty free for all at Stevens. We didn’t have a centralized platform. We had several teachers who had worked at the school for years. We’re here when the school first started using the Google App, Google education suite. And they were very used to just uploading pictures to their drive and sharing images with families that way. We had some newer users who were using the Google photo albums to share with families. My hot tip, if you don’t know this is that because it’s not part of the education suite. There are definitely some privacy issues with using Google photo albums, especially for photos of children. And another big challenge was if you were a teacher who was using Google photo albums to house all of your media content if you left the school, your Google Photo album was deleted with your account. So I was working very closely with our tech department to export all of that content before they left, and make sure that it was archived in a better way. Then we also had teachers who either weren’t taking pictures or were taking pictures and weren’t sending them to us. And we really just wanted every family in the school to have a window into what was happening when their kids were gone for such a big portion of the day. And so, in terms of our requirements, we wanted one centralized platform. We definitely wanted a tool that respected family privacy, especially with the social media landscape constantly evolving. This is something that we really prioritize as an institution. We also really wanted to streamline the experience for families with multiple children. So like I mentioned, you may be a parent with a 1st grade student whose teacher is using Google drive folder. You might be a parent of a 5th grade student, same family. But that class uses an album. So just giving everyone easier access to all of the amazing media that we create at Stevens. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Quick setup with Blackbaud integration * Pilot program with teachers from each division * Migrated existing content * Gathered feedback for improvements * Smooth launch with enthusiastic parent ambassadors VIDEO (03:16) SUMMARY Stevens Cooperative School was able to implement Vidigami efficiently after receiving budget approval for the 2024-2025 school year. The process began in January, with the team setting up their organization on the platform, creating different user types, and immediately integrating Vidigami with Blackbaud, their student information system. This integration automatically created user profiles for all students, parents, faculty, and staff, making the transition seamless. To ensure the platform met the community’s needs, the school launched a pilot program. They selected one head teacher from each of their three divisions—early childhood (Pre-K3 to kindergarten), lower school (1st to 4th grade), and middle school (5th to 8th grade)—and created class album pages for each. These teachers received account creation support and training. The school also migrated all existing content from the current academic year (September to early January) into Vidigami, so parents could find all relevant media in one place. The pilot allowed families to experience the new platform, provide feedback, and help the school refine the process before a full launch. By the time Vidigami was rolled out school-wide in August, about 65 parent ambassadors were ready to support the transition. The setup process, including Blackbaud integration and page creation, was very fast—most steps were completed within 30 minutes, even with the extra detail involved in piloting. This careful, community-focused approach ensured a smooth and successful adoption of Vidigami across the school. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR We were very fortunate to have this approved in our budget for the 2024-2025 year. So as soon as this was approved for us last January we kicked into high gear. We created our organization on the platform and did all of our account set up in terms of creating different user types. And we also immediately did our Blackbaud integration. And that Blackbaud integration essentially means user profiles were created for all of our students, parents, faculty, and staff, who were already part of our student information system, and so that just made it very easy and seamless in terms of our transition. And that allowed us to do a pilot. And we are big fans of pilots at Stevens, especially, just like testing a tool and making sure it’s the right thing for our community and giving families an opportunity to have a voice in terms of what their experience at the school is like. So what we did was identify one head teacher and each of our 3 divisions. So those are early childhood, which is Pre. K. 3 to kindergarten, lower School, which is 1st through 4th grade and middle school, which is 5th through 8th grade. We created a page for their class album. And then we did some account, creation and training with those very willing and able teachers. We’re super appreciative that they signed on to do this pilot with us. Another thing we did was migrate all of their existing school year content because it was in the middle of our academic year. We wanted everything, from, you know, September to early January in the platform. So that parents only had to look in one place for all of that content. And then we launched the pilot with those 3 classes. So to see these 3 steps on this slide. It was so amazing for us to have a chance to pilot it, to make all of these steps really come to life. It was a chance for families to try something new to be part of, you know, innovating and and just curating a new type of experience, and also just a chance to give us feedback on the process. What can we do to make it easier when we launch a school wide, different things like that? And then we were very fortunate to essentially have about 65 ambassadors for Vidigami. When we launched school wide in August of this past year.   RENEE RAMIG  Can you let me know, Leah, about? How long did it take you to get set up with Vidigami to the point where you were able to do the launch, the internal school part.   LEAH DOCKTOR That’s a great question. So the Blackbaud integration was super fast. Just in terms of the setup. The categories and pages could be created in a matter of seconds, and because we just had very limited content. We only gave the parents who were part of the pilot access to the pages for their classes specifically. And so that is a level of piloting detail that you don’t necessarily need to do if you wanted to replicate this at your school, but even just like those steps, making it a bit more intricate for us, were done like within 30 min. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Organized launch * Parent volunteers: “Vidigami taggers.” * Smooth transition: Easy adoption of the platform. VIDEO (02:55) SUMMARY For the community launch of Vidigami, Stevens Cooperative School customized the platform to mirror the school’s structure by creating four main categories: * auxiliary programs and athletics, * class pages, * events and experiences, * and an internal category accessible only to select administrators.   Each homeroom received its own class page, and event pages were set up in advance for all scheduled events for the upcoming school year. For events occurring across multiple campuses, such as the 5th and 6th grade Science Expo held in both Hoboken and Jersey City, separate albums were created within the event page for each location. A unique aspect of Stevens’ approach is its status as a family cooperative, where every family is assigned a school job to foster engagement and bridge the gap between home and school. For the Vidigami launch, a new role called “Vidigami taggers” was introduced, allowing families to tag individuals in photos, similar to the experience on Facebook. This feature was met with enthusiasm and nostalgia from parents. The school was mindful of the significant change this platform represented, as many families were accustomed to using Google Photo Albums or viewing limited photos on Instagram. To avoid overwhelming users, the platform was set up so that parents would primarily see their own child’s class page upon logging in, along with access to relevant auxiliary programs and event pages. This approach ensured that families received only pertinent information and could explore additional content, such as future events or programs, at their own pace. The goal was to create an internal social network that was intuitive, engaging, and tailored to each family’s experience. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So in terms of our community launch, you can set Vidigami up to reflect the structure of your school in a million different ways. The way we approached this was creating 4 main categories which were auxiliary programs and athletics, class pages, events and experiences. And then an internal category that only me and a handful of other administrators have access to. So what we did to prepare for the current school year was, make a class page for each home room, and then, by the time we were setting this up to kick off the September 2024 school year, we had already created pages for all of our events that had been scheduled. You can edit the dates, and if it’s an event that, for example, takes place across two different buildings like tonight, for example, we have our 5th and 6th grade. Science expo one in Hoboken and one in Jersey City. We create an album for each campus. Within that event page I’ll go into further detail about how we launch this with faculty and staff in a few slides. But I also want to highlight something that’s a bit unique to Stevens, but could definitely be replicated at other institutions. And so we are unique in that we are a family cooperative, and for us that means every family in the school has a job, and that job could be as big as planning the gala, which is tomorrow night or holding the door open at our spring concert next Tuesday, and it’s a really great way to kind of bridge the gap between school and home, and also just stay or keep parents as engaged and involved as possible. And so we created a new job for this year, and they are our Vidigami taggers, because, like Rene mentioned. You can tag anyone in Vidigami, and families were really excited. I think maybe a bit nostalgic, because they remembered going to Facebook albums 15 years ago and tagging all of their friends and family. It’s really the same experience, and it’s very easy to do. And another big key aspect about the community launch is giving relevant information to the relevant people to manage the user experience. This was a big change for our families who many of them were just used to Google photo albums, or seeing a few pictures on Instagram. Essentially inviting them into an internal social network was a huge change. So we didn’t want them to log in and be overwhelmed with 30 homeroom pages, tons of event and experience folders. So if I’m a parent of a Pre. K. 3 student, I log in. I see my child’s Pre. K, 3 class page, and that’s really like my main event. But I also have access to the auxiliary programs, to the events and experiences. If I want a taste of what’s to come in the future for my child. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Easy face tagging * Parents can tag their kids * AI + manual tagging = accurate IDs VIDEO (03:09) SUMMARY Leah Docktor highlights the benefits of Vidigami’s tagging feature, emphasizing how it simplifies the process of identifying individuals, especially with the school’s growing population. The Blackbaud integration is crucial because it pre-populates names, eliminating spelling errors and empowering families to tag their own children. This is particularly helpful for families with similar-looking siblings, where the system might confuse them. Tagging is user-friendly; users simply start typing a name, and suggestions appear. As an administrator, Leah can view all photos tagged with her and use the “Is this me?” tab to confirm or reject tags. This feature allows for multiple selections, enabling quick approval or rejection of tags without reviewing each photo individually. Renee Ramig adds that schools can choose who has tagging permissions. Vidigami only allows tagging with users already in the system (via Blackbaud in Stevens’ case). To address issues like similar-looking siblings or young children whose appearance changes rapidly, families can confirm or deny suggested tags, improving accuracy. Vidigami’s system recognizes faces in photos, but it may miss some due to obstructions like goggles or poor image quality. The platform allows manual face selection for tagging in such cases. The system combines manual tagging with optional AI facial recognition and parent engagement to maximize tagging accuracy. This multi-faceted approach ensures that as many students as possible are correctly identified in photos. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR To talk more about tagging, you could tell that this is me at an event on the right side, because I’m not wearing my glasses, but tagging is awesome. It’s made our lives so much easier. Our school is growing. We’re in a very fortunate position to continue to grow annually, and we have a lot of names and faces to learn and match. So the Blackbaud integration was really crucial here, because all of the names were pre-populated. I didn’t have to worry about spelling or anything like that, it really empowers families to take ownership in terms of you know, putting the onus on them to tag their kids. We have kids who have families who have kids in 1st and 3rd grade. But those kids look exactly alike. And so sometimes the system thinks they’re the same. The tagging is so easy. You just start typing in their name, and it pre pops up. But this is really what it looks like. If you go onto any user profile in Vidigami as an admin member like I am. So you can see all of the pictures tagged with me there. I am on the right side talking about Hanukkah with our Pre. K. 4 class. And then if I click the: Is this me? tab, a different tab will pop up, and that’s what the right side of the page looks like. And what’s great about this is, you don’t need to go individually through every single photo. If you know that everything is the user that you want to tag, you can do a multiple selection and approve all of them or decline them.   RENEE RAMIG As Leah said, you can choose to allow everybody or just key people to also tag others. So you get to decide. You can only tag with users that have been added to the system in Leah’s case that’s through Blackbaud. So there’s no misspellings in there, but because of the fact that you’ve got siblings that look alike. You’ve got young students that it seems like they change what they look like from day to day, especially those, you know, like preschool threes. Rather than miss tagging, auto miss tagging, we give families the ability to say, Yes, this is my child or no, this is not, and it leads to much higher accuracy of the photos that are added to their portfolio. So with many photos that are uploaded, and you’re going to get a lot, especially if you’re opening this up to parents being, you know, uploaders, and you’ve got all your teachers is you often are going to get photos where it’s not going to recognize that there’s even a face in the photos. Our system will recognize faces if it if it can tell, it’s a face. So you can see in this photo. It’s recognizing 2 faces. But there’s a 3rd person in here, here because of goggles. It’s only recognizing one of the 2 faces. These 3 photos it’s not recognizing at all. So our system allows you to literally go in and click on the face and be able to auto tag. But if we were relying solely on automated facial recognition, it would be missing all of these students. So we combine manual tagging with an AI system that’s optional schools can turn it on, which Leah’s school did as well as parent engagement. To ensure tagging is as close to 100% as you can get. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Planned launch: Started before school began * Informed families: Consent and platform details * Organized groups: Easy classroom navigation * Trained staff: Fun photo upload assignment * Successful launch: Over 900 photos on day one! VIDEO (02:53) SUMMARY To ensure a smooth Vidigami launch, Stevens Cooperative School planned their rollout by working backwards from the first day of school, September 3, 2024.  In early August, they sent an introductory email to all families, announcing the new platform and informing them about the option to change their child’s photo consent level.  Once families submitted their consent preferences, the school assigned these levels to each child’s Vidigami profile. On the backend, the team set up classroom groups so that families would only see pages relevant to their own children, rather than being overwhelmed by all classroom pages.  This decision was made to streamline the user experience and enhance privacy, though the platform allows for different configurations. A key part of the launch was a dedicated session with faculty and staff during the school’s annual August meetings. All staff were asked to bring their laptops and phones, log into Vidigami, and download the mobile app.  The process was smooth, with only a few minor login issues that were quickly resolved. Staff were pleasantly surprised to find that all photos from the previous school year (2023-2024) had already been uploaded and were available to view. Following advice from Renee, the school gave faculty a fun assignment: upload photos of their classrooms or take selfies in their spaces. This ensured that when families logged in for the first time, there was already engaging content available, making the platform immediately interactive and welcoming. The launch was highly successful—on the first day of school alone, 932 images were uploaded, capturing moments from student arrivals, classroom activities, and families experiencing the start of the new year.  This approach helped create a vibrant, content-rich environment from day one, making the transition to Vidigami both smooth and meaningful for the school community. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR We really worked backwards from our 1st day of school. So we started on September 3rd of 2024, and we worked backwards in terms of which communications families already receive, what we need to add in different things like that. So in early August we sent an introductory email to all families, letting them know that we were going to be using a new platform. And alerting them of the fact that they can change their child’s consent level if they wish to do that so once we received consent levels from families we went in and could assign those consent levels to their child’s profile in Vidigami, and we were also working on the back end to set up groups for classrooms. So, like I mentioned earlier, we didn’t want a family to log in and see 30 different classroom pages. We wanted them to just see what was applicable to their child. This is a decision we made as a school for several reasons, but you do not have to have that level of security on your end. And then what was really fun is our session with faculty and staff. So for our opening meetings each August we always have a session. We as marketing communications, always host a session with faculty and staff, but we knew we had some work to do in terms of launching Vidigami, so we told everyone to come with their laptops and phones. We had every single faculty and staff member present log into the platform. We also had all of them download the mobile app. If they had a smartphone and log in that way. It was pretty seamless. There were like maybe 3 people who had login issues. And Renee addressed those right away. But it was fun, because when people logged in they had a surprise waiting for them. And all of the 2023, 2024 photos had already been uploaded so they could see that. Another huge thing I want to shout Renee out, for here is she gave us the great advice to give some faculty homework, and it was fun homework. It was upload. Some photos of your classroom, maybe take a selfie in your book nook and upload them to your class page, so that when families receive their invitation to log into Vidigami for the 1st time they had some content waiting for them, and were really ready and prepared to interact with the platform. Once the school year officially kicked off. and we think we were very successful, because the 1st day of school was September 3rd and I just checked our stats. 932 images were uploaded on that 1st day. Some of them were from, you know, my team and I running around taking pictures of arrival with our balloons. A lot of them are pictures from classrooms. Students like getting used to their new space for that year. Maybe some of our youngest learners, with their parents and trepidatiously entering the classroom, but we were able to capture it all and share it, and it was really special to have that change for this year. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Vidigami boosted faculty and staff engagement * Rapid adoption: Thousands of photos uploaded * Easy participation with Media Request Link * Sharing authentic classroom photos VIDEO (03:03) SUMMARY Leah Docktor reflects on how quickly faculty and staff adapted to Vidigami, contrasting it with the much longer adjustment period typically required for adults to get used to new systems. Unlike the three years it can take for adults to adapt to a new school schedule, Vidigami was adopted rapidly and enthusiastically by the school community. This is evidenced by the impressive volume of content: over 26,000 photos were uploaded by teachers to class pages in a single year, and nearly 20,000 more were added by other community members to auxiliary programs and event pages. Leah shares specific examples, such as a selfie uploaded by the head of school at a volleyball game and a second-grade teacher, Bianca, who uploaded nearly a thousand photos before going on maternity leave. These examples illustrate the high level of engagement and participation from faculty and staff. A key feature that supports this engagement is Vidigami’s media request link. Instead of simply providing a folder for photo uploads, the media request link acts as a call to action, inviting faculty and staff to actively contribute photos for specific events or needs. For instance, during the annual spring day of service, the school sent out a media request link to encourage teachers to upload photos from their classrooms and onsite locations, ensuring comprehensive coverage of the event. Renee Ramig adds that, compared to the previous practice of curating and selectively posting photos on social media, Vidigami allows for a much broader and more authentic sharing of classroom moments. While not every photo may be perfectly curated, parents now have a much deeper and more genuine window into their children’s daily experiences at school—something that curated social media posts cannot provide. This shift has made the platform especially valuable for families, as they get to see a fuller, more authentic picture of school life. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So I want to talk a bit about the faculty and staff impact. And I was thinking a lot about this this morning, because to go to tell a quick story. A couple of years ago we partnered with independent school management to revamp our students schedule, and I will never forget, because it’s something that my partner, Dean and I talk about a lot, but the consultant told us that for students it takes them 3 weeks to get used to a new schedule, and for adults it takes them 3 years pretty crazy when you think about it. And I want to say that Vidigami did not take 3 years for people to get used to, because over 26,000 photos have been updated, sorry, uploaded by teachers to their class pages this year. and an additional almost 20,000 have been uploaded by just other members of the community to auxiliary programs or events and experiences on the left side. This picture is actually a selfie that my head of school uploaded, he went to a volleyball game. We have one of our students in the back and 2 different families and their coach. and then Bianca is one of our second grade teachers who’s been at the school for years, and she’s actually on maternity leave now. But before she left she uploaded nearly a thousand photos this school year, from what her second graders were up to. Another great tool about Vidigami is the media request link. And so you know, for most of our teachers, we’re really grateful that they are just constantly capturing what’s happening and uploading. But. for example, yesterday we had our annual spring day of service. And so, as a reminder to faculty and staff, we sent an email out to all the faculty, reminding them that we cannot be in every classroom or at every onsite location at once, and we need their support taking photos. And so we sent the media request Link. which is different than just sending a folder that people can upload pictures to. It’s really also a call to action. It says, to like, drag and drop your pictures here, to add them to this folder. So it’s beyond, just like this is where you can dump everything. It’s really like an invitation for them to participate.   RENEE RAMIG Right. I just wanted to make a comment, especially the pictures on the right. So, Leah, when you were before you got Vidigami, you were posting on a social network, and you would select like you would curate photos. Correct. And right now you probably wouldn’t have curated those 4 photos. You may be curated one right? And so now the parents really get a look into their child’s classroom, and to see what’s going on at a level that you’re not going to get if your school is only posting on like Facebook or Instagram, or one of those. And so these might not be the best of the best for your school, but for parents these are the best of the best, because they get to see what’s really going on in the classroom.   Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Vidigami improves yearbook creation * Students find it faster and more engaging * Easy photo access enhances workflow VIDEO (01:15) SUMMARY Leah Docktor highlights the positive impact of Vidigami on the yearbook staff. The students were surprised and excited by the number of photos they were tagged in and were eager to use the platform. Previously, Leah had to compile content into folders for the students, but now they can log in and see everything immediately, which has significantly sped up the yearbook creation process. The students are enthusiastic about using the platform and frequently want to log back in. Currently, students only have viewing access, not uploading capabilities, though there is potential to expand access to include uploading in the future, especially for events like overnight trips. Giving students access to view content has greatly improved the yearbook team’s workflow. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR The student impact has been really interesting to observe, because we actually only give our Yearbook staff access to Vidigami. They, however, were in disbelief at the amount of pictures that have been taken of them have been tagged of them, and they were really excited to engage with everything that was on the platform to give an example of how we used to manage this in the past. What I would have to do is aggregate all of the content from the 4th grade that we had, and give them access to a folder. Now they just log in and see everything. It really expedited the process. And it’s made it really exciting for them, because they can see everything at a glance. What are the pictures that I think tell the best story for this yearbook page or this spread? so it’s been really special to have them logging into the platform, and I constantly have students who are like, I want to log back in. But I can’t remember my password. Please help me. So I think students are really excited about it right now. They don’t have access to upload pictures. It might be something that we explore in the future, especially for overnight trips and things like that. But right now giving them access to see everything is more than enough, and it’s been a huge help in terms of our workflow. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Content Overload *  Conversation Starters * Student’s Journey VIDEO (04:44) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains that one of the main challenges they aimed to address was content overload, particularly the difficulty of sharing large numbers of photos from school events with families. While social media platforms like Instagram allow only a limited number of photos per post, many more photos are taken at events, and previously there was no easy way to share all of them with families without complicated workarounds. With Vidigami, families can now access all event photos, which has led to high engagement—75% of parents have logged into the system, and over 30% of surveyed families use the platform weekly or daily. The rest typically log in monthly, often prompted by class news updates. There has also been interest from families in adding grandparents to the platform, and the school is considering expanding access in the future. Renee Ramig adds that Vidigami can be customized to include people beyond the immediate school community, such as professional photographers or non-staff coaches, to fit each school’s needs. Leah also notes that as children get older, they tend to share less about their school day with their families, but the photos on Vidigami have become valuable conversation starters at home. For example, parents can ask about specific activities shown in the photos, such as set building for a school musical or participating in a technology class project. These images help bridge the gap between school and home by giving families insight into their children’s experiences. Leah shares a personal story about a student who has been at the school since early childhood and is now graduating. By uploading archival content to Vidigami, she can see the student’s entire journey at the school in one place, making the experience especially meaningful. Renee adds that Vidigami also makes it easier for parents to create graduation montage boards, as all the necessary photos are readily available in the student’s portfolio, saving time and effort compared to searching through old physical photos at home. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR I meant to say this in the beginning. But another key pain point we were trying to solve was this idea of content overload and what you can accomplish in a social media post or not. So last week, for example, we had our 3rd and 4th grade musical. and we can post, you know, 20 pictures in an Instagram slideshow. And it’s great. And it’s wonderful. But what about those other 250 pictures we took? There wasn’t really an easy way unless we were uploading a Facebook album and making sure the media opt out. Kids weren’t included and things like that to get that content to families. Now they can see it all, and they’re excited to log in and see what’s new. But as of the end of last month 75% of all of the parents enrolled at Stevens have logged into the system, and we recently administered a media and communication survey. Over 30% of families who have completed the survey said that they log into the platform weekly or daily. The rest are logging in monthly, typically prompted by our class news that teachers send out bimonthly and an interesting thing that happened when we launched is we got a lot of requests from families to add grandparents to the platform. So we know that this is something that we may want to open up in the future, and we know that we have the support from Renee to figure out the best way to do that if we want to.   RENEE RAMIG Yeah, I just want to add that you know, schools can add people other than just their immediate community. We have many schools that add a professional photographer to it, non staff coaches. And so yes, we just work with you to make sure that Vidigami fits with what you need at your school.     LEAH DOCKTOR I’m excited to talk about this slide. I think that many people can probably relate to the fact that as the kids get older. They don’t want to tell you as much, or they’re like they had it. I had a good day. They don’t really want to share, and we’ve heard tidbits from families that you know these pictures have been a conversation starter. The dinner table is definitely more interesting. So, for example, I mentioned last week that our 3rd and 4th graders had their musical. It was finding Nemo. It was fantastic, but so this picture in the middle might just look like students painting a mural. But it’s actually students working on the set pieces for finding Nemo. And it really helps parents to ask questions like. What are you painting for the set? What are the props? Do you know all the songs? Do you know your lines? And then I have to give kudos to my associate Director Dean, who took photo on the right, which is probably my favorite photo this school year, you can tell there’s an age gap here, but so we have our 8th grade student, Asha, who, as part of a technology class assignment, coded a game, and the class actually invited some younger students in to test the games. And so this is a beautiful moment that Dean captured a great conversation point for Asha and her parents to talk about what that experience was like having, like a user use, something that she designed, but also a really cool option for this younger student to tell her family. I got to sample and test out a game today that an older student designed and built in a class like, I’m excited to do that one day. So it’s really a great way to bridge that gap again between school and home. To bring it back to this idea of capturing the student journey. I am the most sentimental person ever, and I always cry at graduation. But this is a family. We don’t play favorites, but we love this family. The parents are super involved, and he has been at the school since we had a twos program that we no longer have, and he’s graduating 8th grade in a couple of weeks, and I’ve been spending a lot of time putting some archival content onto Vidigami. And now I can see every step of his journey at Stevens throughout the past few years. So it’s really special to really see this idea of capturing a student’s entire journey at the school in one place, because we’ve brought it to life so easily.   RENEE RAMIG Yeah. I just wanna say, you, do you see how emotional Leah is? Now, imagine the parent looking at these photos of yeah. That’s amazing also at 7 Hills, and I think you have something similar at your school. We asked each parent of our graduating 8th graders to create an actual Physical Montage board, and I remember the 1st year we had Vidigami. They’re like, oh, this saved me so much time because they’re not trying to go through their drawers in their house and their boxes to find the photos, because, you know, the majority of them were all in their students portfolio that they just downloaded to create the montage of so yes. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Enhances family engagement * Streamlines media management * Empowers marketing and admissions * Simplifies event photo sharing * Powers versatile digital displays VIDEO (05:03) SUMMARY Leah Docktor describes the significant impact Vidigami has had on various departments at the school, especially in advancement, marketing, admissions, and fundraising. She emphasizes that everyone in the school contributes to student retention and fundraising, and Vidigami supports this by making it easier to capture and share important moments that foster family engagement and satisfaction. The platform has streamlined the school’s media ecosystem, allowing staff to be more present and effective in their roles without needing to be everywhere at once. For admissions and external marketing, Vidigami has made it much easier for staff to access and use photos. The admissions director, who previously had to request specific images, can now quickly find and use any photos needed for presentations or info sessions. The digital marketing firm also benefits from direct access to the platform, enabling them to create new ads efficiently without relying on staff to select and send images. In development and fundraising, Vidigami has simplified the process of sharing event photos, such as for Grandparents and Special Friends Day. Previously, sharing these photos involved multiple steps, including taking, editing, uploading, and posting to social media, while also managing privacy concerns. Now, teachers can upload photos directly, and public slideshows can be easily created and shared via a link, with privacy settings automatically respected. This has eliminated many manual steps and made sharing content with families and the public much more efficient. Renee Ramig adds that public slideshows are useful for both external marketing and internal communication, as they can be shared in newsletters or embedded in digital signage around the school. Updating these slideshows is simple, and they can be displayed on monitors in school lobbies or other areas, keeping content fresh and engaging for families and visitors. Leah notes that the office manager for the youngest students enjoys updating the digital displays each week, capturing the joyful atmosphere of the early childhood building and giving parents something new to see each day at drop-off. Renee shares an example from her previous school, where a middle school student council member was responsible for taking and uploading photos each week, ensuring that even middle school activities were regularly featured on digital displays. This approach increased the visibility of middle school events and gave students ownership of documenting their school experience. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So departmental impact. I really want to talk about advancement. And I went to the 1st P.D. conference I went to when I started working at Stevens was the Case-NAIS Conference and I walked away from that conference with this idea that every single person in the school plays a role in retention, and every single person in the school is a fundraiser. Vidigami really drives that home for us. We can’t be in all the places at once, even though we really would like to be. We know that those moments at drop off, or dismissal, or whatever it is, are really crucial for retention and family happiness and Vidigami, just, you know, helps again bring those conversations to life, add some color to the day, and it’s just been really helpful in terms of like the entire media ecosystem at our school. In terms of external marketing and the work we do with enrollment management and admissions. Our admissions director has been at the school for 30 years. She has seen every type of picture known to man she loves. She’s like, I want to update my info session slides for next week, like I know exactly where to look. It’s eliminated that step of her making a media request for, like 7 grade pictures of this this and this like the not that we wouldn’t support that, but like there is just an easy way for her to sift through pictures herself, or if she wants a picture of a specific kid or something like she can search and find that our digital marketing firm also has access to Vidigami. I will say they’ve definitely been really on it this year in terms of seeing new content we upload and sending us new ads to review because they have access all of our pictures, instead of again having that middle man saying, Let’s use these 5. In terms of development and fundraising.I want to talk a little bit about public slideshows, so we have grandparents and special friends day every fall, and there were so many steps in years past, including the steps I was taking to run around the school and get a picture of every kid and their guest. Then we would import, edit, upload the pictures, make a Facebook album, share it out like so many steps have been eliminated because we can upload things to the platforms. Teachers can upload things to the album. We can share a public link to this slideshow very easily. Once we create the collection. And you know for kids who do have those privacy concerns. They’re automatically hidden. And it’s just like an extra step that’s eliminated because we don’t have to worry like, oh, did we include that picture of that kid who has a no-public release or things like that? So it’s really just been super impactful. And we’re super grateful.     RENEE RAMIG I just wanted to mention. So public slideshows is for your forward facing, like you said your external marketing. But this allows you to create a link so you can share it in a newsletter. So what many schools do is you know, you rolled it out to parents pretty quickly, but some schools won’t roll it out to parents right away. So you can use that public slideshow link to share with your parents, too. For example, in your weekly parent newsletters. We also have, just with a click, an embed code. If you don’t know what an embed code is. That’s okay. But a lot of things like digital signage, even if whether it’s the big one outside or just a small monitor that runs when you enter your school lobby. You can do that through a slideshow here. And literally, it’s 1 click. And now you’re able to just go in and change those photos in that public slideshow that plays on your digital signage signs and or monitors.   LEAH DOCKTOR Our office manager at the building where our youngest students are is so excited to update those every week because there is really a sense of joy in an early childhood building that is so fun to capture. And it’s just exciting, like those parents are still walking in every morning and dropping those kids off directly to their classroom. So they pass that monitor, and they’re excited to see what’s new.   RENEE RAMIG I just want to make a comment that at the school I was at, which was 7 Hills in Walnut Creek, California. We a lot of times middle school. You don’t get as many photos as you do in preschool, and K, and one. So one of our student Council members in 8th grade. The position was historian, and their role was each week they needed to take a minimum of 10 photos of things happening in the middle school. They went in and they uploaded the collection. So when anybody walked into our middle school building, whether it was a current parent, a prospective parent. Even students will see brand new photos every week that are playing on the Monitor that welcomes them when they walked into middle school. And we put that as a student responsibility. So they, you know, they were the ones uploading it and choosing what they felt were the the key things that were happening in middle school that week. So that was a way that we got more middle school photos. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Significant Time Savings * Improved Efficiency * Strategic Focus * Data-Driven Projects * Historical Preservation VIDEO (03:31) SUMMARY Leah Docktor explains that Vidigami has significantly reduced time-consuming tasks for the school, saving about 300 hours this year alone in three main areas: yearbook creation, sharing event photos, and responding to image requests. Previously, these tasks required a lot of manual effort, but now, with everything organized and searchable by school year on Vidigami, staff and families can easily find and access photos themselves. This has made sharing event photos more efficient and eliminated the need to worry about where to upload or how to distribute them, as everyone can simply log in to see what’s happening at the school. Leah also highlights that the platform has freed up staff time for more strategic and meaningful work. For example, Dean, who was promoted to Associate Director of Strategic Communications, can now focus on important projects like crisis management and launching new initiatives, such as a free tuition program, because the content management system keeps everything organized and accessible. The department has also been able to conduct more in-depth, data-driven projects, such as running eight parent focus groups, since they no longer spend hours searching for photos. Additionally, Vidigami has helped the school preserve and share its history. During the school’s 75th anniversary, an archives committee digitized historical photos and documents, which are now stored and accessible on Vidigami, including images from as far back as 1946. This allows the school to tell both current and historical stories in a flexible and engaging way, supporting community engagement in ways that fit the unique needs of the school. Read Transcript LEAH DOCKTOR So I took a look. And I want to talk about 3 major time sucks that have really been eliminated with Vidigami and given us about 300 h back this year, and this isn’t all the time we’ve gotten back. But this is a big chunk of it. So first is Yearbook, which I’ve spent a little bit of time talking about before, the next is sharing event. Photos. Yes, we’ll continue to do that roundup post on Instagram, so that our prospective families and any of our followers can see what’s going on. But we don’t have to worry so much about where we upload things. Are they going to see it. It’s a great tool for people to just log in and see what’s happening in the school. And another big time suck has been researching and providing images on requests. I actually, just before this call, got an email from an office manager who was looking for a picture from coincidentally, our journey ceremony last year, and I was like, they’re all on Vidigami. Go here and you’ll find them. But once people become accustomed enough to the platform they know where they need to look. There’s a search feature like it is wonderful and easy, and it’s organized by school year. I also want to talk about how I’m very excited because we promoted Dean to Associate Director of Strategic Communications for this school year, and I will say that having this content management system has really freed up a lot of his time to do a lot of really thoughtful and meaningful work for the department. Everything from crisis management and making sure we have all of our systems and policies and structures in place, as well as we launched a free tuition program this year. I don’t think we would have been able to do it as successfully if we didn’t have a tool in place for us to pull photo content and just keep everything organized and at bay. And it’s also just really opened up a lot of time for our department to do some really thoughtful like data driven projects. So for several years we had been doing a parent satisfaction survey. This year. We actually did 8 focus groups throughout the winter and the spring. And so we’re really excited to be able to dig into that data because we’re not spending hours and hours looking for pictures on the Google drive anymore. And so this screenshot is from 4 days ago. I can already tell you that this summary with media uploaded has increased since then. But this is just a glimpse of what we’ve been able to accomplish on Vidigami since we launched. And then to wrap up. I think I really just want to share this idea. That community engagement looks different at every single school, and Vidigami gives you the flexibility to do that in a bunch of different ways. Like I mentioned at the beginning, we celebrated our 75th anniversary as a school during the last year, and prior to that we had an archives committee of parents who was helping go through historical pictures and documents. And we were like, Okay, we organize them now they’re digitized. And for a little while we were in a holding pattern. We were like, Well, where do they go? But now I can log into Vidigami. And I have pictures from 1946 and 1947, before the school was even incorporated in there. And so it’s really special, because Vidigami lets us , tell current stories as they’re unfolding, but also really tells the history and the story of the school in a special way. Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] KEY POINTS * Archiving for Organization * Direct Video Uploads and Embeds * Granular Permissions * Controlled Media Uploads VIDEO (05:03) SUMMARY This Q&A section covers several topics related to using Vidigami, including archiving, media types, and permissions. Regarding archiving, Renee Ramig explains that while Vidigami doesn’t offer a simple bulk upload feature, this is intentional. The process of manually archiving photos allows schools to clean up messy archives, eliminate duplicates, and organize content effectively. Leah Docktor adds that this process helps identify and catalog the most crucial content, rather than just dumping everything in. The discussion then shifts to media types supported by Vidigami. Renee clarifies that the platform supports images (JPEGs and PNGs) and direct video uploads up to 1.4 GB. It also supports embedding videos from platforms like YouTube or Vimeo by simply grabbing and pasting the link, which makes the video appear as if it’s hosted directly on Vidigami. Mandy Chan emphasizes that the media size limit is in place to give administrators control over who can upload large files. This allows schools to restrict uploading large videos to specific users, such as teachers. The YouTube and Vimeo embedding feature allows schools to easily add content already stored on those platforms, which can be unlisted when no longer needed publicly, while still being indexed within Vidigami. Renee highlights the granular permission settings within Vidigami. Schools can customize permissions for different users, such as giving specific parents extra tagging permissions or granting temporary upload access to parents attending field trips. This flexibility allows schools to tailor Vidigami to their specific needs. Leah adds that her school has a photo and video committee of parents who have upload access to all events. They also grant temporary upload access to parents who have taken great photos at specific events or allow them to send the photos to the school for uploading. Finally, Mandy thanks Leah for sharing her experiences, and Renee thanks everyone for attending. Read Transcript RENEE RAMIG I started the question about archiving, and as Leah said, Yes, you can archive, and it is a manual process, but we help you set up great workflows and a lot of schools find that you’re able to clean up, because often your archives are very messy. They’re in multiple places. You have tons of duplicates. So we don’t offer a just Hey, take this whole folder and let’s just drop it in, because usually the cleaning process is really helpful and gets it really organized. And then you’ve got this really clean, nice archive to share in Vidigami. What did you find, Leah, when you were doing your archives.     LEAH DOCKTOR Yeah. So I mean, we’re very lucky that we’ve done so much digitizing work. And it was interesting because I wasn’t here when the school was planning for its 70th anniversary 7 years ago, but there were pictures sprawled down the table, and our admissions director was like this girl graduated in this year. So this picture has to be from sometime in the nineties. But our archiving piece has been very seamless, I would say. I think the bigger lift is more on our end to make sure things are accurately tagged in terms of like which school year. They were taken from the early years of Stevens, are also not murky, but like a lot of the students who were enrolled at the school when it was first founded, were children of faculty members at Stevens Institute of Technology, which is a university in Hoboken. And so we have a lot of pictures of those faculty kids, you know, like running around a college campus. We know that they were students because we have documentation, but like those pictures aren’t necessarily from school, but they still help tell our story. So it’s really also about, I think Renee made a great point in terms of like duplicates, messy photos, especially a lot of scanners automatically scan like the 1st version and then an enhanced version, and then everything gets uploaded. So I will say it is a good way to start going through your archives and really attacking like what is the most crucial content you want, digitized and cataloged, instead of just dumping everything in.   RENEE RAMIG So the next question, I see is, what does all media mean? So Vidigami supports images, of course, Jpegs and Pngs. And we also support videos up to directly upload it up to 1.4 GB. If you don’t know what that means, it’s totally okay. We’ve got schools uploading videos from, you know, 10 to 15 seconds all the way up to 30 or 40 min directly into Vidigami. But we also support embedding a video. Again, it’s a super easy process. I don’t want you to be scared by the term embedding. But if you upload your video to either Youtube or Vimeo, you can literally just grab the link. You’ll put it in Vidigami, and it actually for the end users. It looks like it’s in Vidigami, but they’re actually watching it on Vimeo or Youtube.   MANDY CHAN And the comment I want to make around the media size, it’s really so that you have a lot of control over permissions of who can upload what size of media. You don’t want to let everybody upload. You know a 10 min video, you may only want that permission to be available to your teachers. And then, the Youtube and Vimeo is really to give you the ability to be able to easily add content that you’ve already got stored in in Youtube or Vimeo. But now you can unlist it when you no longer want it public, and it just all gets indexed within Vidigami.   RENEE RAMIG Our system is granular. So let’s say you create permissions for all your parents. But you’ve got some parents like Leah said that you want to do a lot of tagging, so you want to give them just those 10 parents, maybe extra permission to tag for this question. You’ve got 4 parents that are going on the field trip. So maybe all of your parents don’t have uploading permissions, but you can give those 4 parents uploading permissions. You could even invite just those 4 parents, even if the rest of the parents aren’t. Yes, using Vidigami. And you’re just sharing public slideshows so very granular. We can work with you on permissions that work best for your school. When we set up Vidigami for you.   LEAH DOCKTOR Yeah. And to add on to that, we another one of our cooperative jobs is we have a photo and video committee. So all of the parents that are on that committee have upload access to all of our. And events and experiences. I wish that I could like have them full time. Run around. It’s super helpful. And also like. Sometimes we’ll just get a parent who’s like, Hey? I took some great pictures at this event. I’d love to share them with the school, and like we can give them temporary access to upload, or they can just send them to us, and we can do it for them.     MANDY CHAN Thank you so much, Leah, for sharing your experience with everybody this year.     RENEE RAMIG Thank you for attending. Thank you, Leah, very much. Bye, everybody! Back to the Top [https://vidigami.com/landing-page-stevens-coop/#units] DO YOU WANT TO SEE A LIVE DEMO? --- Generated by SignalToAI v1.0.25 For more information: https://vidigami.com/llms.txt