What Social Media to Use?

[Jobos]

Primary here. We used to use X which worked well and every teacher and most TAs had an account posting photos of what was happening in the class but now we are looking for a new social media platform.

 

It needs to be easy and preferably free so was wondering what others use now that schools are moving away from X?

 

[ShellfishClive]

What's the reason you are wanting to move away from X and what are the requirements for the platform? Is it purely to post pictures?

[Jobos]

Just now, ShellfishClive said:

What's the reason you are wanting to move away from X and what are the requirements for the platform? Is it purely to post pictures?

 

I think it was the bad rap X got last month.

 

I think photos are the main reason but of course there will be times when it will just be text. X fits the bill perfectly but the HT said X is out of the question. 

[tom_newton]

Bluesky seems to be a place X folks are migrating to

[Jobos]

1 minute ago, tom_newton said:

Bluesky seems to be a place X folks are migrating to

 

Never heard of Bluesky but it does look like a clone of X 😀

[Rob_D]

We're looking at moving from X to Instagram.

[tom_newton]

6 minutes ago, Jobos said:

 

Never heard of Bluesky but it does look like a clone of X 😀

I've moved all my twittery stuff over, left my old account on X so nobody can squat on it! 

[ITGuyNW]

Facebook/Instagram

 

Personally I use Bluesky

[daturum]

You need to consider what age bracket the parents of your students are in and that will influence which Social Media they are most likely to use.

 

I'm a governor at a small primary school and the decision was made before the recent problems to move from X to Instagram because it is the social media of choice for the age bracket of parents at the school. The school I currently work at uses a WhatsApp channel.

 

I'm increasingly of the opinion LinkedIn is great for a lot of school stuff but it is aimed more a professional collaboration rather than informing parents.

Edited February 11 by daturum

[ZeroHour]

One nice thing about Bluesky is that you can use your schools domain as the @ handle rather than {school}.bsky.social to help verify ownership.

EduGeek has https://bsky.app/profile/edugeek.net and mine is https://bsky.app/profile/zerohour.edugeek.net

 

How to: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial

[Jobos]

It has been suggested to use Tapestry so it can be private and as Tapestry is already used for foundation in the school it will be no extra cost. I'm not convinced this will work but one of todays jobs is to look at how parents can be added on mass.

 

[FragglePete]

School took a decision to remove any X accounts we had in place; various faculties had ones setup for themselves and these have now been closed down and all reference to X removed from our website.  Purely because of what the platform has become since Musk took control of it.  We're still on Facebook and Instagram which appears to be going well.

 

The motorcycle IAM group that I'm a committee member of where I look after their social media also removed ourselves from X and concentrate on Facebook, Instagram and BlueSky.  My kids reliable inform me that Facebook is for old people and Instagram is where the kids are at!

 

Pete

 

[AlphamaleZed]

Yeah X is worth getting rid of, we use instagram as the main point then facebook second.

 

Instagram, tiktok or FB. depends on the age of the parents. maybe send a poll in the newsletter?

[TechMonkey]

2 hours ago, Jobos said:

It has been suggested to use Tapestry so it can be private and as Tapestry is already used for foundation in the school it will be no extra cost. I'm not convinced this will work but one of todays jobs is to look at how parents can be added on mass.

 

At a previous place we used Tapestry and it was great. I was also a user and loved it. I don't remember the user import or link being arduous, I think a teacher may have been in charge of it. I would recommend it (based on 6 year ago experience) and personally would be much happier with Tapestry than photos being put on Social Media.

[machy]

i quite like blusky, but not enough of the peeps i follow on twitter use it...

[Jamman960]

Not sure if its changed but setting up parents in tapestry has always been a bit of a long winded process as you have to import pupils and parents separately then manually match them up, I've seen them claim its safer this way but when its techs doing the matching rather than staff that actually know the parents and children its far from it

[tom_newton]

Mildly off-topic, but I will happily follow back edugeek folks on bsky if they make themselves known  

[mrstrong]

We use class dojo https://www.classdojo.com/ , also in primary, takes a bit to set up  / manage but parents seem to like,

but given you already have tapestry maybe makes more sense to stick with the one platform

Edited February 12 by mrstrong
typo

[Gongalong]

21 hours ago, daturum said:

You need to consider what age bracket the parents of your students are in and that will influence which Social Media they are most likely to use.

 

I'm a governor at a small primary school and the decision was made before the recent problems to move from X to Instagram because it is the social media of choice for the age bracket of parents at the school. The school I currently work at uses a WhatsApp channel.

 

I'm increasingly of the opinion LinkedIn is great for a lot of school stuff but it is aimed more a professional collaboration rather than informing parents.

 

^That. We use Facebook and Instagram, but are a secondary. Parents/carers tend to gravitate more towards Facebook, and students Instagram.

[Jobos]

We have added the parents to tapestry and so far parent engagement has been good. Adding parents to tapestry is the easy bit, linking the parents to the child takes time when it needs to be done one parent at a time and selecting the child from a dropdown. Still it only needs to be done once but I will have the joy in September of removing the leavers and adding the new intake.

 

Thanks for all the input. The HT is trialling tapestry until the summer and may keep it or try something else.

[Gongalong]

And make sure you're adhering to photo consents! That can be the time consuming bit.

Edited February 12 by Gongalong

[Jobos]

33 minutes ago, Gongalong said:

And make sure you're adhering to photo consents! That can be the time consuming bit.

I leave all that to the office who collect the data and the teachers who do the posting.

[DavR]

6 hours ago, Gongalong said:

^That. We use Facebook and Instagram, but are a secondary. Parents/carers tend to gravitate more towards Facebook, and students Instagram.

 

We're a primary, and used to find that we'd get parents on Facebook and children on Instagram.

 

The sad thing is, since I've been doing this job, I think the age range has slipped, and now most parents are the Instagram generation! We still get interaction on Facebook, but it mostly seems to be governors and ex staff 😂

 

We use social media for what I call fluff and promo - stuff that is nice for the parents to see but not urgent, and/or stuff that makes the school look good. Anything more important than that goes through ParentHub. I wasn't massively keen on getting a dedicated parent comms app, but it has made a lot of difference, versus us sending emails the parents never read.

[Olliedawg]

Facebook is the primary method here, then instagram