Social Media and Schools - Jennifer Frombaugh

Photo taken by mkhmarketing. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License. Retrieved from: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0f/Social_media_class.jpg

Lavergne, N. (2017). Improve school district-community relationships with social  media. Delta Kappa Gamma Bulletin, 84(2), 13–15. Retrieved from http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eft&AN=131118226&site=eds-live (Links to an external site.)


Summary:

•  Livingston Parish Public Schools found out first-hand that social media is a good way to communicate with the community and parents about information about the school and upcoming events.
• The school's past ways of communication: newspapers, phone calls to landlines, and letters are now outdated. Newspapers and landlines are no longer popular. Sending letters home with the students rely on the responsibility of the students and sending them through the mail is a slow process.
• The example in the article talked about how may parents after a flood were able to reach the internet quicker than a phone. This is what caused the school to use social media more actively. After the flood the school’s following rose. Using Twitter and Facebook is a quick and instantaneous way to provide any information.

Assess:

• This article was written recently and uses the example of Livingston Parish Public Schools in Livingston Louisiana from the 2016-2017 school year.
•  The author Nikki Lavergne is the Instructional Technology and Social Media Facilitator for the school listed above. She has other qualifiers listed by the citations to prove she is a reliable author.
• The article could be better improved if she tied on information from other schools. The information provided was from her experiences, this helped to strengthen her reliability, but more examples would help to better get the point across.

Social media and schools: Does it work? (2014). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9tLYGvE7w4g

Summary:

•  This video is a news story about a Hempfield School District using social media to their advantage. Not only do they post on social media the school spent $10,000 to develop an app for the parents.
• The news reporter uses a parent, Larry Guengerich, in the video to discuss how he feels about the school’s social media presence. He talks about the convenience and ability to find information in a comfortable way that he is used to.
• The superintendent is also in the video, discussing how the district made the decision to use social media. Convenience, as Guengerich discussed, was top of the list.

Assess:

•  This news story was not as up to date as I would like to see, but it discussed important aspects of social media. As it is an older video, there is now more information that could be included.
• Both parents and the school district were included so the viewer was able to see how both sides felt and why it was a good step for the school to take.
• The video only showed one parent who was familiar with using social media. It would have been nice to see a parent who was less comfortable with the idea but was able to see the benefits or at least just some other parents.

Reflection

             My school district used social media while I was in high school, so I had some previous knowledge of this subject. This was how I knew what was going on with the school. Between the article and the video, I was able to widen my understanding. Since I was in high school, I didn’t think much about the use the parents had for the social media sites. There are a lot of functions that can be done to ensure the safety of the student in addition to just keeping everyone updated. The video that discussed an app was interesting too, as with an app there could be more specific to the student information, and it is not a public platform. I believe schools must keep up with society and incorporate social media into their communication efforts. It is an easy way to reach many of the parents and older students with the current usage of technology.

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