Eastern Greene principal to use Twitter to communicate with parents, students

Keeping his students and parents informed is important to Eastern Greene High School Principal Kevin Frank.

As he starts his fourth year as principal, he'll continue to do the things he has in the past: Mass e-mails to parents with information they need to know, and send out a district-wide quarterly newsletter.

But with today's technology, he questioned if that was enough. Is there a way to reach more people?

Yes.

Frank started a Twitter site on the school's Web site to help keep students and parents informed. It can be found at http://www.egreene.k12.in.us/ and click on the high school tab. Frank's Twitter can be found on the right-hand side of the page.

"I'm a big IU sports fan, and I follow Coach (Tom) Crean's Twitter," Frank said. "I thought it was only natural that I take my role as principal here and give little bits and pieces of information out to parents to supplement what we already do.

"I see this as a way to highlight some things through the week. I can get on there and put little nuggets of info. I view it as a way of offering positive comments and words of encouragement to student activities and athletic events."

Eastern Greene recently updated its Web site, and during an administration meeting the Twitter site was discussed.

"We're going to be able to give teachers access to maintain some Web spaces on this new site. Right now it's pretty similar to what we've always had on there. Our goal is through the year, build the content on the Web space. They might be able to provide some simple photos or maybe even video pieces," Frank explained.

"That was kind of my inspiration to start this Twitter. We had an administration brainstorming meeting, and I brought this up."

What is Twitter? According to Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia: "Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets. Tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters displayed on the author's profile page and delivered to the author's subscribers who are known as followers. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends or, by default, allow open access. Users can send and receive tweets via the Twitter Web site, Short Message Service (SMS) or external applications. While the service costs nothing to use, accessing it through SMS may incur phone service provider fees."

Frank hopes he'll receive more feedback from parents and the community with the Twitter site, either in person or by e-mail.

"I hope by putting out those nuggets of information, I get some feedback. I already get feedback from parents, but maybe this will spark some conversations. If folks want to provide feedback, this is another way," Frank explained.

Eastern Greene had great success with on-line registration earlier this month, and that helped convince Frank that many in the district are connected and use the Internet.

He said Aug. 10 was set aside as the on-line registration day, and the school also made computers available the day of on-site registration.

During normal on-site registration, Frank said there's a steady stream of people coming into the school. Thanks to the on-line registration, "there were maybe four or five people per hour. It went real smooth."

And by allowing parents to use computers during the on-site registration, "that eliminated a chunk of work that our secretaries have to do."

This is Frank's 13th year at Eastern Greene. The Lowell High School and Indiana University graduate was a math teacher for six years, assistant principal for three years, and started his fourth year as principal earlier this week.

"I fell in love with this place," Frank said.