Some colleagues have asked how I am using social media to engage our parents at W. Erskine Johnston. Then this evening I had a quick back and forth with Lorna Costantini on twitter, who was looking for an Ontario principal who uses social media to engage the community. I thought it might be helpful to write it up my experiences here as a reference for anyone who wishes to know the how and why of using social media to engage your community.
Step 1: Set up a school blog:
A school blog is a must these days. With a plethora of FREE blogging platforms available, there need be no extra cost (check out Blogger, WordPress and Edublogs for starters). While it does take a bit of time to get the blog set up, a basic school blog can be set up in less than an hour. Learning how to post, embed media files and link to other web content takes some fiddling around at first, but for the best instructional videos, head over to youtube and you will find exactly what you are looking for in a matter of seconds.
I started my blogging experience using Edublogs, which provides educators with basic free accounts. This is the platform that we have subscribed to for our teachers to create classroom blogs. You can see a few examples here: Full Day Kindergarten (Junior) , Grade 1 , Grade 3 , Grade 4 French Immersion , Grade 7 , Grade 8.
As a sidebar, we do not mandate that teachers maintain class blogs. I offered a few workshops last year and invited any interested teachers to attend. Several attended and then several more, etc…. We now have 21 class blogs, which means we have over 90 % of the classrooms in the school represented. Why has it caught on? Teachers have several different reasons for blogging. Some like that it saves them time and work when they are able to post assignments and resources on the blog. If a student misplaces anything, it is all available for download. Some staff appreciate sharing their teaching and learning from the blogs their colleagues maintain. Some teachers thrive off the positive feedback from parents who appreciate the blogs.
While our teachers are using Edublogs, I moved the school blog to a self-hosted wordpress blog about 2 years ago. We have an easy to remember URL – wejps.net. I have devoted some time to customizing the appearance of the blog in an effort to brand us as a truly cutting-edge school. Our home page includes links to the classroom blogs, as well as our twitter account and a “like” box for our facebook page. The final key feature is our “subscribe via email” box which allows parents and students who wish to receive notifications when a new post is published to get an email. We currently have approximately 140 subscribers to our blog.
Parents stop me in the hall all the time to express their appreciation for the blog. They also leave comments, sometimes asking for further information or clarification, sometimes providing feedback for us to consider. The following is an example of a kind comment left by one of our parents:
Step 2: Setting up a school twitter account.
The next natural step was to set up a twitter account for the school. I chose — you guessed it — @wejps as our twitter identification. I created the following three short videos to show how to set up a twitter account:
The twitter account allows us to post quick and timely snippets of information. For instance, if one of our ski buses was late returning from the hill or if the student transportation was cancelled because of inclement weather, I send out a tweet.
Step 3: A facebook page
I didn’t set up a facebook page right away. I was not as familiar with facebook back then and didn’t understand the potential for connecting with students and parents. When I did set up the account (http://facebook.com/WEJPS) , it became quite popular very quickly. Our blog has approximately 130 followers who subsribe. It is also the platform with the highest growth over the past little while and I anticipate that it will be the “go-to” place for most of our parents and students in the future. To learn how to set up your own facebook page for your school, here is a great guide.
Step 4: Linking it all together
If I were to update each of these individually, I would not be saving myself any time at all and I would have given up long ago. I use twitterfeed to link all the accounts up so that, except when I want to tweet a short and timely alert, I only update the blog. It then publishes to twitter and our facebook page. Twitterfeed offers a quick set up guide on their site and it takes less than 10 minutes to link up. This is a huge time-saver for me, which is essential. I refuse to make more work for myself, don’t you?
Step 5: A Youtube Channel
The most recent addition to our W. Erskine Johnston PS digital footprint is our Youtube Channel , which I set up in the fall. I have posted a video of our band performing at the Remembrance Day ceremony and plan to add more content throughout the year.
Enjoy the performance!
If you are using social media to engage your community, please take a moment to let me know in the comments.
Thanks Shannon for putting together the big picture of engaging parents in your school using social media. It is such a great story and I hope more principals will follow your lead. You really do make it look easy!! How can they not?
Hi Lorna,
That is my point. My message to fellow admin here in Ontario is this: Once you wrap your heads around what social media can do in terms of communication, you will begin to see opportunities for true relationship building.
Shannon
Thank you for putting your own advice in this great summary. The sheer number of tools can be overwhelming, but your stepped approach will serve as a great guide to Principals ready to really connect with their community.
Hi Jeanine,
I hope that the post helps other admin see how easy it is to get started. Thanks!
Shannon
Hey Shannon – well done in using social media to connect with the community. Much of what you have touched on is the "how" rather than the "why" and I fear that many schools will read this andl use social media to do the same old things in a new way. What I mean is that blogs and facebook pages are used to send out information rather than to engage in conversation… Blocked comments, heavily moderated feeds, etc. Some may take the old newsletter and just make it digital and not actually use it to include parents and community.
I would love for more people to hear how these tools have led to more engagement by communicating WITH rather than communicating TO the community. How have these tools led to parents having more input into their child's education?
At our school, we are using the same tools and trying to move from parent involvement to more engagement so I would love to hear how these tools have helped at your school both with teachers and admin. Do you find there is more transparency? Trust? Voice?
I look forward to hearing more and thank you for your leadership in this!
Hi Chris,
Thanks for your thoughtful response. I am sorry you fear that this post may perpetuate bad practice. That wasn't my intention. I wanted to demonstrate how easily someone can set up the accounts for the school. Discussions around a core leadership practice – seeking feedback – need to happen but not always in the same breath. There needs to be room to try things out and learn without the pressure to feel comfortable with absolute openness – unmoderated comments, facebook streams, etc…
In my post I mentioned my own apprehension with facebook in order to demonstrate that it is a continuum. I hope to encourage others to get involved by being open about my own journey. I'm not "there" yet when it comes to understanding the different ways I can use SM to engage parents, but I am well on the road and simply wanted to show that the road isn't scary or time-consuming.
To answer your questions briefly – yes. There is more transparency. There are more conversations happening AT the school (a few comments on the blog and a few "likes" on the fb page — the blog is moderated and the fb page is not). Where we see greater engagement is in the school and through the comments / feedback left on the classroom blogs. I'm interested in using gdocs and polleverywhere to gather parent feedback, but that is a "next step" for me.
Shannon
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Hi Shannon
I appreciated the post, particularly the way you sequenced the process of introducing these tools to staff and community. It is evident that the staff are embracing these tools as a result of your modeling. I can share this as an example with e leaders in my district (who are wee bit more risk averse) as a path that can be followed.
As a tag along to Chirs Wejr's response, we are in an odd place with regards to the use of social media and our broader understanding of what it means to be 'engaged' in public education. The dominant culture for schools and school systems is still very much one where the information flows one way (from school/system to community) with few chances for information and ideas to flow the other direction. This is the challenge we face- failing to meet could result in us losing the system we hold so dear.
The work that you are doing, as well as the example that Chris is setting, are both instructive. For Chris I would add that my own experience as a VP has been strategic and measured in my efforts to push in thie area of SM and have always tempered by the level of comfort of the Principals I've worked alongside, ultimately they (and you my friend) have the ultimate word. In the end, being a VP is like driving your dad's car…
Thanks amigos!
Hi Brian,
Well, as a fellow VP, I can certainly identify with the "driving your dad's car" analogy. I think we have the shared experience of having to push when and where possible. It is my experience that the shift towards a two-way flow of information is happening, at least here. There is a huge push for seeking parent and community feedback. That hasn't included a discussion of how sm can be used to that end yet, but I do believe that as a core leadership capacity, the building of relationships is a key piece of what we do. Yes, sm will facilitate that for those who have wrapped their heads around it. This post was intended to help those who haven't to get started playing without the pressure to be fully immersed right from the start. I wasn't and still have room to grow, as we all do.
Shannon
Quick comment for now….but I think Brian’s point about “losing the system we hold so dear” is key. If we are about public education then it is important to meet that challenge of directing information and ideas both ways…which relates to Chris’s questions about trust and voice…..which is important to consider for public and parent confidence.
Thanks for sharing about the methods your are using, Shannon. Looking forward to hearing about how your next steps are going!
Good points, Sheila. I am hopeful that as more admin begin to play with social media and begin to understand for themselves what it is and what it could offer with regards to their leadership practices, they will begin to see how valuable a tool it can be for including parents in the conversations. It will never replace the relationship work we need to do on the ground level, but it will certainly augment it.
Parents at my school don't tend to use the blog or facebook page to give feedback, which they are invited to do over and over. They do, however, email me more frequently, stop in the hall to chat about initiatives, and request meetings, so I believe that they feel their input is being sought. The fact is that many parents do not feel comfortable participating in a public discussion and you know, that is ok. The point is that the conversations are happening and I think that is in large part to a more visible admin voice via the social media channels we use.
Shannon
I think I see the same at our school… Parents are not comfortable posting their feedback online but will stop me int e hallway and engage in dialogue around a topic…. Which means we are building trust and that is what it is all about.
I never mant to state that this post will encourage poor practice but more a question of how we can work together to try to prevent that poor practice from continuing to occur. I have heard many times that schools and districts use social media when, in my opinion, they remove the social from social media by not responding to comments or blocking comments altogether.
I think many have seen the power that letting go can have… I encourage you to share more about those hallway conversations and meetings that result from being more open to feedback through social media (I think many can learn from you in this area). I believe that even if the community sees others engaging in conversation, it models to them that that is how we do things… We listen.
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Hi Shannon,
I attended your session at ECOO 11 and it was invaluable in helping me to start pushing our school to have a more significant social media presence. Since then we have set up a Twitter account for the school (110+ Followers) and our principal (with whom I've shared this blog) has become increasingly supportive of these efforts. I think that blogging is our next step (facebook is still blocked in our board) but I worry like Chris said that it will simply be used as a new broadcast medium as opposed to a way of promoting interaction and collaboration.
I think that one of the key aspects of blogs like this and the comments that follow, is that it helps to spread the message that social media is being used in education, even though it may not be in our city / district / board etc. As an aspiring VP (fingers crossed – interviews are starting soon), I will use examples like this to help show my principal that a) it's not just my crazy idea, and b) there are others who are successfully integrating social media into their school and it is having positive effects in terms of building relationships within the school community. I love Brian's analogy of driving your dad's car but by sharing your story, and through the story's of others shared through comments, I think our task of encouraging those who don't fully understand social media is made much easier. Thanks!
Scott
Social media is affective in every case of school life. Parents and teachers can be in a communication via social media which shows the power of it … thanx for putting together Shannon
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