Social Media. You love it, you hate it, or you fall somewhere in the middle. More than ever, people are relying on social media as streams of mass communications, and schools have followed suit. Sports teams communicate via Facebook groups and pages, school closures are announced on Facebook, parents seek out community via various social channels, and so much more. Specific social media pages need to be more up to date than ever, with frequent updates to keep the information relevant; this can be seen as a daunting task by many.
Both Wayne-Westland and Farmington Public Schools use social media as a way to stay in touch and keep those in their school community up to date. Both districts actively and regularly post on their Instagram and Facebook. Meta makes this easier than ever, allowing you to schedule posts ahead of time and post the same post to different connected accounts (IE: a post on your facebook automatically uploads to your Instagram).
TikTok, X, and YouTube are popular among the younger generation but are still used in some capacity by all. YouTube is used primarily for longer form content, and it seems to upload past school board meetings for easy access and replay. I feel as though X (Twitter) is becoming a thing of the past and is not the best form of communication, and districts are starting to realize this and take a step back.
Let’s compare the two districts’ activity on X. We can see that Wayne-Westland CSD has not posted on X since 8/24, whereas Farmington Public Schools made a post two days ago. So, ultimately, it seems it is the district’s discretion of the activity on each account. What are your thoughts?
Now, we can take a look at YouTube. Wayne-Westland CSD uses their Youtube channel as a place to share past school board meetings to make access easy for community members. They uploaded this fabulous welcome video that I think is worth a watch.
Farmington Public Schools does not have its own specific Youtube channel, but I was able to find two channels of similar content. FPS TV10, which streams sporting events, board meetings, etc, with the help of student interns, and the Farmington Public Schools Board of Education, which uploads past school board meetings to provide easy access for community members. I could not find a general welcome video, but this one about their early childhood education program was very nicely done.
