Twitter as an official form of school district communication.

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Permalink Reply by Eric Pingel on November 20, 2009 at 8:55pm

At Pella CSD we use twitter to roll out HS and MS announcements, guidance, and some sporting event info. When secretaries add info to website (Drupal based) it gets auto posted to Pella CSD Twitter account. Just getting around to setting up a fan page in Facebook.

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Permalink Reply by Hayden on November 21, 2009 at 8:24am

Our school district started using Twitter this year and you can read their post here:
http://pvsd.schoolfusion.us/modules/cms/pages.phtml?pageid=120237&a...
Their tweets are here:
http://twitter.com/PV_Schools

The interesting aspect is that it is BLOCKED in our own school district, we are NOT allowed to go to Twitter while at school. Don't you find that odd?
Hayden
Yes, I have twitter and facebook

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Permalink Reply by Robert Alford on November 23, 2009 at 8:04am

We have a similar situation with Facebook. It is blocked by our district's firewall but is the preferred means of communication for our high school clubs. The students are obviously well versed in proxy servers. Thanks for your input.

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Permalink Reply by Katelyn Boddy on November 22, 2009 at 12:56pm

I find it very fascinating that Twitter is becoming so popular. I'm currently a college student studying education in Rochester NY and while I do have a facebook, I have not gotten hooked on Twitter yet. I've signed in and tried to figure it out but at this point, a little confused as to how it would be useful. Would any of you mind if I looked at your school twitters to get an idea? It would be great if I could! Thanks!

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Permalink Reply by Rein Bijlsma on November 23, 2009 at 3:12am

I made an account on Twitter for my school ( http://www.twitter.com/groenhorst ) this year. We are a vocational college in the Netherlands, for students aging 16-22. An age where you would expect a large acceptation and use of Twitter.
Due to the fact that not many pupils are using Twitter from their mobile phones, I don't think Twitter will be largely integrated within schools for at least a year or so.
Pupils use mobile phones almost 24 hours a day. But many of them don't have internet on it yet. Even in our country, it will take some time before they will be able to use Twitter from their mobile phones. We have a school population of about 1500 students; only 29 of them subscribed to our school-account on Twitter yet.
So, I see some future for Twitter when teachers gonna use it to announce they won't be at school early morning because they are ill or something like that. Or a school might use Twitter to announce new articles on the schools website. Things like that.
My guess is that Twitter will be of marginal importance ( even when I myself am a true Twitter-addict ! ).

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Permalink Reply by Robert Alford on November 23, 2009 at 7:58am

Rein,

Thanks for your input. I am also surprised by the lack of Twitter activity by the teenagers in our schools. One of our AP Government teachers (students age 16-18) found that very few of his students were using Twitter. They stated that Twitter was for old people :(

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Permalink Reply by John Just on November 23, 2009 at 7:05am

Pinellas County Schools uses Twitter as a communcation tool to get information directly to followers: http://www.twitter.com/pcsschools

I use Twitter to communicate with our school techs and for my own Pro Ed to keep up with the lastest in Tech and ED Tech.

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Permalink Reply by Robert Alford on November 23, 2009 at 7:51am

John,

Thanks for the input. I will be presenting the "findings" of this blog post to our Instructional Technology Director next week. Does your office of communications monitor and manage your Twitter account?

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Permalink Reply by John Just on November 23, 2009 at 7:56am

Yes they do.

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Permalink Reply by John Just on November 23, 2009 at 7:55am

Sorry, it's http://www.twitter.com/pcschools

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Permalink Reply by Nick Alvarado on November 23, 2009 at 8:32am

I think Drupal is the most affordable CMS system around. I just got my twitter feed to post to the front page of our webpage. This means that using the Twitter webpage, my school secretary, magnet coordinator, principal, and counselors can post updates on school activities. If there is deeper information, they can post a link to the google calendar, where the information can be added in a similar fashion. Using web2.0 features also improves my schools Texas StaR Chart annual technology survey. Twitter is a great resource if it posts to a schools website. It makes the user interface "fool proof" and can proliferate info to mobile devices, facebook fan pages, and twitter accounts simultaneously. I'll post a link to my drupal website when it goes live in a few weeks. examples of our twitter feed though: http://twitter.com/debakeyhigh
Also, Pew did a great study on Twitter/Facebook usage: http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2009/Twitter-and-status-updating...

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Permalink Reply by Katelyn Boddy on November 28, 2009 at 5:14pm

Thanks for the links to your school websites. I found them very helpful!

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