Spreading the Good News: Social Media for Schools
Presented by Heather Hurley, Assistant Principal, Arlington Public Schools (Disclaimer: I am quite fond of Heather!)
Recommended Reading:
The Power of Branding
Show Your Work
Important points to remember:
· Start SLOWLY!
· Tell good stories
· Share something small every day
· Get out in the school and see what’s happening
· Don’t be human spam and over-share
· Give a voice to all stakeholders
· Make sure you do not re-tweet the same users over and over
· Use multiple platforms (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)
· Stick around: commit to the plan and don’t stop all of a sudden or discontinue
Jamestown Elementary’s Plan:
Based on a district committee where one representative per school is given a stipend to be social media director
Monthly meetings and trainings for committee members
District Social Media plan
Originally used Facebook, Twitter, Remind, Pinterest:
- Twitter proved to be most useful and successful
- Pinterest ended up being adopted by the librarian for sharing books each month that were new to the collection
- Remind was useful to parents and managed by individual teachers
- Facebook is launching ion the future
Add-Ons to improve the plan:
· Nurph- a Twitter clean chat platform for teachers and administrators to facilitate chats in the evenings – a question is posted and a unique hashtag
· Periscope: Live feed videotaping allowing a post to Twitter. Viewers can comment and also save the feed to their device
· Flipagram: Several photos can be added and posted online with music, titles, etc.
· Storify: Makes a story from a Twitter feed based on a particular hashtag
· Tweetdeck: multiple Twitter accounts can be viewed in one window—Tweets can be scheduled, also great for managing Twitter chats
