The Saint John Branch of the NBSRT led the way in the fall of 2004 when it was the first to introduce a branch website in the days when not every retired teacher had an internet connection or even a computer. Those members who were “connected” could read the branch’s minutes and reports, check the constitution, get contact information for the branch executive, and much more. Suddenly, branch information was at a member’s fingertips – quite literally.

The future was clear, and six months later in May 2005 at the NBSRT Biennial Meeting in Sussex, a motion was passed to create a provincial website committee whose task it was to create a provincial website. Members from the Bathurst, Carleton-North York, Restigouche, Moncton, and Saint John branches made up the original committee. Larry McPhee of the Saint John Branch was the first chair of the NBSRT Website Committee, and Kathy Dalling of the Saint John Branch was asked to be the webmaster since she had experience setting up the NBSRTSJ website. Less than a year later, on February 14, 2006, the first generation NBSRT provincial website was launched on the NBTA web server. An image of that first Homepage is shown above.

By 2012 it had been six years since the website’s inception, a long time in the world of technology. The Website Committee made the decision to investigate using a professional website developer for an upgrade to the site. Eventually Gary Nightingale at IBS Ltd was selected to design and manage the website. The second generation website was launched on September 25, 2012 when Website Committee Chair, Marian Humphrey, introduced the upgraded site to the Board of Directors at their fall meeting. Homepage image shown above.

In early 2018, the Online Media Committee began to think about upgrading the website to a 3rd generation edition. Since the 2nd generation website had been launched in 2012, members of the committee had gradually taken over more and more of the responsibility for updating the content on the website; however, there were still areas that had to be updated by the website manager. During this period, the committee also became aware of interactive website platforms that would enable more online participation by the committee members as well as the general membership.

During the summer of 2020, and with support from the Provincial Executive, the committee contacted three website developers, including IBS Ltd, about creating a new provincial website. The Online Media Committee’s recommendation to accept CBT Technologies website re-development proposal was accepted in a motion passed by the Executive at the September 2020 meeting.

The 3rd generation NBSRT provincial website was launched on December 1, 2020,using WordPress as the authoring software.  Unlike the previous 2nd generation website that was managed by a professional webmaster, the 3rd generation website was managed entirely by an in-house webmaster who was a member of the Online Media Committee.  This reduced the time between updates to the website, and reduced costs significantly. An image of the 3rd Generation Homepage is shown above.