Leaders in the Lewisville Independent School District are interacting with student through technology, so they have decided to try this communication method with parents.
Lewisville ISD hosted its second annual social media town hall on Tuesday night.
Teachers, staff and students from across the district joined together for a live webcast from 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on the district’s website. Leaders took questions from folks on Facebook and Twitter about the changing face of education in the district.
The main topic of discussion was Lewisville ISD’s strategic design initiative that they’re slowly implementing throughout their schools. District leaders say the idea is to teach students in a way that gives them training for the real world after graduation. That means a lot of technology.
Lewisville’s rolling out a technology initiative that puts an iPad on the desk of each student as well as laptops, eReaders, computer and other techy tools in the classroom that are used every day in the work world. So far that initiative has only been applied in 3 schools and will roll out to the rest in coming years.
District public information officer Karen Permetti says one of the things that made the town hall so useful was that students were actually able to comment on these initiatives; and telling parents and community members how they initiatives work.
"We cover 127 square miles,” said Permetti. “So how do we bring families from across 127 square miles together at one time to give them an update, and not only for us to share with them but for them to share with us what they're thinking."
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The town hall was also a new age learning experience for students. The live video feed was produced by one of the district’s television production classes.
Students from each of the district’s five high school feeder patterns produced pre-made video updates to show their own unique efforts before the live panel discussed the rest of the technology initiatives.
Last year 5,000 people viewed the first social media town hall either watching live or viewing the taped version later. The district says during the live version alone this year they gained over 4000 new Facebook “likes” and had close to 100 interactions on Twitter; putting them on pace to go way above and beyond last year’s participation.
Lewisville ISD plans to post the full video of the session and answer questions on the website this week.
The district also says they plan to hold the event again next year.
