Lynn Singh

Sophomore Tess Arendt taking a picture of a window painting for social media.

Recently, North has been combining information access with student involvement through the introduction of the social media management website Class Intercom. The website allows North to collaborate, schedule and moderate posts on multiple different platforms. This is the district’s first implementation of Class Intercom in a school. 

“We are the guinea pigs,” said Tanis Simoncelli, technology instructional support coach. 

Simoncelli, along with Ben Wagoner, LRC/Media specialist, aims to use Class Intercom to get students involved in creating social media posts focused on North. 

“So ideally, we would love to get students started with doing content creation in the building,” said Simoncelli. “It can be any student really, that has an account with Class Intercom. We can set up all of our students to be those roles for us.” 

In order to become a content creator for the school, those interested will be given a student account where they will then be able to draft posts. Those drafts would then either be approved by moderators to be posted to North’s accounts on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, or edited until they meet the criteria for a school social media post.

 “We want to make it fun. We want to have the kids enjoy it. We want it to be an informative thing. But we also understand we are the community and we’re representing and we take that very seriously,” said Wagoner. 

Class Intercom is a big change from how North used to manage their social media. 

“We would have to go in one by one into each platform and post… so lots of copying and pasting or from a phone or an iPad, typing things in,” said Simoncelli. 

Class Intercom improves the management of different school accounts by linking them together in one place.

“We couldn’t schedule things in advance. So that’s what makes this really nice is we already have posts scheduled for next week that are ready to go,” said Wagoner. 

They are also able to use the platform to promote other accounts related to North. 

“Sometimes I’ll take content from other groups, and I’ll repost it. So then that way we can spread the word out there,” said Simoncelli.

Through Class Intercom and staff-run social media accounts, Wagoner and Simoncelli aim to show the community what it’s like to be a student at North. They highlight students’ daily lives at school through daily theme posts, such as #SCNMakerMonday, which showcases projects being created at North, or #SCNTuneInTuesday, which highlights students listening to or playing music, as well as sharing short segments of information. The variety of theme days give a lot of insight into the daily lives of North students. 

This benefits many different groups. Parents get the chance to see what their students learn in school, and families new to the district have a way to see what going to North is like. It also benefits students, who get to know their fellow classmates better, as well as see what other classes offered at North are like. 

“We’re trying to showcase, what do people not know about being in high school,” said Simoncelli. “We showcased some kids learning in 2D Media, they were drawing pictures of themselves or family members, [and] I had no clue that there were some kids that were so gifted in drawing. I saw them in Project Lead The Way, I saw them over playing sports, but I never knew that they were artists.”

The implementation of Class Intercom encourages connection, providing a window into the lives of North students.

“We’re trying to have fun with it. It’s okay to not be super stuffy all the time with our social media. We want kids to interact with it, have fun with it,” said Simoncelli. If you are interested in becoming a content creator for North, reach out to Mrs. Simoncelli at [email protected] or Mr. Wagoner at [email protected].