With many students and parents joining social media networks, some central Wisconsin schools are embracing the technology, using it to communicate with students, parents and district residents.
In the Wisconsin Rapids area, where many law enforcement agencies have fully embraced social media, school officials are exploring the concept at a district level, although individual schools, as well as extra-curricular clubs, organizations and sports programs already have their own pages on such sites as Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest, said Phillip Bickelhaupt, the district’s director of technology.
“Mostly it’s teacher-driven and building-level administrator-led,” Bickelhaupt said. “We haven’t gone with a district site yet; that’s probably something we’ll go to within the next year.”
The district’s Lincoln High School, East Junior High School and Howe Elementary School are among those with their own social media accounts, along with sites for various sports teams, such as soccer, wrestling and clubs, such as German Club and Art Club.
Marshfield School District leaders also have started thinking about using social media, said Mike Drevlow, the district’s technology director. Although more information about the district’s usage of such technology was not available as of Friday afternoon, a search for any school-related Facebook pages yielded one for Nasonville Elementary School’s parent-teacher organization, which boasted 76 likes. On the private side, Columbus Catholic Schools had 821 likes.
The Neillsville School District has about 400 likes on its Facebook page, and it posts reminders about district events, breakfast and lunch menus and photos from club competitions and sporting events.
In addition to social media sites, Wisconsin Rapids also uses a variety of other high-tech media to engage students and parents, Bickelhaupt said, noting a pilot program this year at Lincoln High School to use a mobile app called School Connect, through the company that prints the school’s yearbook. It allows students to sign up for alerts from teachers and coaches with reminders about quizzes and practice.
“We’re experimenting with it at Lincoln this year — potentially to go with it district-wide (in the future),” he said. “One of the tennis coaches at the high school is using it. She sends out text messages from it.”
At some point, district leaders could start using the free service in the classroom as another resource when it comes to anything from providing information about assignments to issuing reminders about bringing a certain textbook to class, Bickelhaupt said.
“Really, I think it is going to fit what we need; we could even start going beyond that,” he said.