Florida And Alaska School Districts Use Twitter To Communicate With Parents
This is how you do it people!
Two school districts on opposite ends of the country have introduced Twitter to their arsenal of communication tools.
Broward County Public School in Fort Lauderdale, Flordia and Anchorage School District in Anchorage, Alaska have both signed up for Twitter’s social media messaging site to post updates, called “tweets”, that are then sent out to parents, teachers, students and staff within the district.
“This provides the district an additional method to deliver information expediently and directly to students, parents, and the community,” said the Florida district. “Twitter supplements the district’s current communications vehicles, which include parent link phone messages, e-mails, the district’s Web site, BECON-TV, and the parent newsletter.”
This is important to note: The school isn’t looking at Twitter as the single solution to their communication problems. Instead, it is simply one tool in their line up of communication efforts.
When the Anchorage School District was asked about their recent decision to use Twitter to communicate with the people in their area, they said, ”We’re just getting started in the world of social networking, and we’re taking ‘baby steps’ to make sure that we don’t get in over our heads. So, what can you expect to see? For now, news releases and school closure information. We’ll also put events on our event calendar and put up some pictures of the great things our students, teachers, and staff are doing. Once we see how that works, we may introduce new features.”
They’re playing it safe and taking “baby steps” to start, which is probably a good idea. Great advice for schools around the world who might be considering the introduction of Twitter into their arsenal of communication tools.
For the full story, visit: http://www.thejournal.com/articles/24151/
Photo by Benjamin Mercadier
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One Response to “Florida And Alaska School Districts Use Twitter To Communicate With Parents”
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jlyons-pavcs on June 5th, 2009
At the Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School we use Social Media to communicate better with our families. We use our blog (www.pavcsk12.org/newsroom), Facebook (search – Pennsylvania Virtual Charter School), YouTube (key word PAVCS) and Twitter (twitter.com/pavcs) to reach out to parents/students and community. The response has been building throughout the year. I’d love to hear how other schools are using these platforms.