5 Ways to Use Social Media for Parent Engagement in Child Education

Wednesday, 25 October 2017

In today’s time and state, social media has taken over our lives, it is slowly becoming a necessity that we’re getting more and more dependent on. And essentially its not such a bad thing as most people would portray it. It is just how communication and lifestyle has evolved over the years. Web based Social media might be a huge leap forward when compared but right now it is something that people cant imagine the world without. So many businesses depend on it for regular income.

 So why not involve education on the regular? Yes there are lots of educational pages, groups and what not on all the social media platforms, but that’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for is ways parents interact with the school and the teacher through the social media websites. Yes this is already happening, we are not putting out some new options that the schools and the parents can adopt, The schools are on social media websites like Facebook, the parent are there as well, so you see where this is going.

This collaboration has already started. What we’ll be looking at is listing down 5 ways that social media is already being used by the parents and educational institutes. Studies have shown that this change from the traditional form of engagement with the parents is actually is actually quite quicker than anticipated.

- Website: By websites we don’t mean a 4-5 page web page that has some out dated photos and general information about the school and the faculty. The days of the traditional websites are long gone. Now a school needs to provide relevant information to the parents. They need to place a portal that parents and students can login to and take a look at the curriculum or home work.
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They need pictures and videos for all the most recent events that have taken place at the school. And they need a direct mode of communication with teachers through the website itself. And this is already being done by the schools. There are numerous schools who have set up highly interactive websites that allows them to pull all the relevant pictures and videos from various other social platforms like Instagram and YouTube. most of assignment writing services upload some helpful videos on the YouTube.

They have a portal in place that is regularly updated with the relevant information like daily homework for students, as well as information for parents like their children’s performance in class. Every parent has their own login details. All the while providing direct links that allows them to either send an email directly to the relevant teacher or an in house messaging inbox that’s regularly used and updated.

- Blog: The school or the members of staff can start a blog with regular updates and posts that are extremely engaging and are equally as helpful. For example, they can write about whatever new study came out about children and education. or they can write about their school and the activities etc that they conduct in the school etc. This will keep the parents engaged and get information from a singular source. It should not display any school agenda or work. Just articles about above mentioned things. It can also include pictures and videos. This again is done by a lot of schools world wide. The principal or someone higher up usually write these posts and creates a new way to interact with parents. The key here is to make the article extremely relevant and catchy so that parents pay attention.

- Twitter: A twitter handle for the school can be set up to pass out the relevant updates and important announcements to everyone. Twitter is now as common as the newspaper and everyone uses has their own account. Parents can follow the twitter handle for the school and stay up to date without taking any additional steps. The updates can be something sudden like a snow day holiday, or just your regular things like upcoming events, or parent teacher meetings, etc.

Things that do not require a lot of details are absolutely perfect to be announced on twitter. Facebook can also be used in this matter but then again the Facebook updates are not guaranteed to reach the parents feed and they might miss it altogether. Twitter is much easier to handle and navigate though for quick updates. If parents require any further updates they can enter a reply and a representative of the school can either answer them right away or depending on the concern can give the parents a call as well.

- Facebook: Schools can create a group or a page on the Facebook and keep it well updated with all the pictures they have regarding school trips, events, parties, or general activities at the school. All the parents are now on Facebook and if need be they can be reminded to subscribe to the schools page and stay updated. So instead of waiting for insanely long periods for pictures relative to trip for example, they can just be downloaded from the Facebook and either saved or printed however the parent deem right. Facebook can also be setup to provide updates and quick info like twitter and it will be much easier to get all of the required updates on the sane platform. Videos can be uploaded on Facebook as well and directly accessible for the parents. Facebook can also be used to send and receive messages which can be relayed over to the appropriate teacher.

YouTube: Teachers can make videos of important classes and upload them so the the parents If they want to, can take a look at the videos and the lessons. Once done they can discuss it with their children, revise it, prepare for upcoming tests etc. This will allow the parents to get a hand on approach to their children’s education and be a part of what and how they learn at school. They can provide feedback to the teacher that would be very helpful in the long run.
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