Social media & the School

Early of this year marked the beginning of YY in stepping to another stage of development, going to primary one for his formal education now. Being parents, we were there for the orientation and the 1^st day of school. To me, after leaving school for a long long time,  going back was nonetheless a shock in both behavioral and practice. One of the most obvious and disappointing one was the lack of technology usage as medium of communication and high usage of paper in doing so. I felt like I was standing in a backward place then in the recent world.

I realized I’ve evolved much in support of technological communication though I was labeled as an IT idiot. I understand well the effectiveness, speed of communication via technology & how we could help the green environment and preservation of the forest.

In the announcement by the principal, it was said all kind of school-parents communication shall be in printed pieces of papers passed to the students to be brought home. Imagine, if a normal size primary might consist over 1200 students, how much resources is needed to send out the most simple message across effectively.

Orientation Day at the school hall.

I’ve briefly checked on the web of that school but it looks like it was not present after all. My suggestion is to leverage on the latest social media or social networking tools to reach out to the vast numbers of parents on any announcement or information deemed important. Social media as a tool is relatively inexpensive and accessible anywhere and this enables anyone to receive and send information directly with just a click away.

It also allowed the school to publish shared statements and to be viewed by all with the hope to generate virtually instantaneous responses. Many companies realized now how important social media is to their businesses in communicating with mass customers. Similarly, schools should also start to understand the needs of evolving from traditional method to contemporary one.

Hopefully, using of social media shall facilitate higher parental participation as well as to encourage parents’ involvement and higher support level from teachers.