A school field trip is one of the most rewarding moments to capture and share, and PhotoCircle makes it easy for teachers, chaperones, and parents back home to experience the day together. Before you head out, a little setup goes a long way toward keeping things organized, safe, and easy to manage. Below are our recommended best practices for running a Circle for your next field trip.
The first decision is who can do what inside your Circle. Think through:
Mapping this out in advance makes setup quick and avoids needing to make changes mid-trip.
If students will be uploading content, we strongly recommend enabling Moderation for the Circle. With Moderation on, a Moderator must approve photos and videos submitted by guest users before they appear to the rest of the Circle. This gives you a chance to catch anything that shouldn't be posted before parents and other members see it.
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Tip: Assign more than one teacher as a Moderator so the workload is shared. Moderators receive a notification in the app whenever a new item is awaiting approval, so splitting the duty between two or three teachers means no one is glued to their phone for the whole trip.
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For more on how Moderation works, see Moderating Content.
If chaperones will be contributing photos and videos but you want parents back home to have view-only access, the cleanest approach is to invite chaperones to your Workspace for the duration of the trip. This gives them a contributor role with the ability to upload, while parents at home remain guests with view, react, and comment access only.
After the trip wraps up, simply email [email protected] and PhotoCircle Support can revert those chaperone accounts back to normal guest accounts. This keeps your roster tidy and avoids leaving extra contributor permissions in place after the trip is over.
Don't wait until the morning of the trip to invite people. Share the Circle with parents and trip attendees a few days ahead of time so everyone has the app installed and is ready to go.
For larger groups, a printed QR code is the easiest way to invite everyone at once. Open the Circle, tap Invite in the upper right corner, then tap Together? Wedding? Party? to generate a QR code. Tap Save Print-Friendly Version to add it to a handout, permission slip, or trip itinerary that students can take home to their families.
For more details, see How do I invite someone to my circle?