HHS enters world of tweets

By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    HOULTON — Houlton Junior/Senior School is joining the World Wide Web to promote activities and school announcements for parents and teachers.
    As of Tuesday morning, the school has joined the ever-expanding world of Twitter, an online social networking and microblogging service that enables participants to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters. These short online comments are more commonly known as “tweets.”
    HHS Principal Marty Bouchard said the idea of creating a Twitter account for the high school was part of his goals for improving communication for the 2011-12 school year.
    “It was part of my goal to get more information out to the educational community,” Bouchard said. “This is my announcement platform to get information out for the whole town.”
    As of Tuesday afternoon, the school had 26 “followers.” Only those that follow the school receive posts. The school can be found on Twitter by searching for “HHS_SHIRES.” It’s Bouchard’s hopes that the number of followers grows to the thousands.
    “If school is going to be cancelled, I will tweet it,” he said. “Also, I’ll be tweeting the scores of games, or letting people know about upcoming parent meetings or concerts. I’m not going to be spending all of my day posting, but this can be a quick way to put out announcements for the public, similar to an electronic bulletin board.”
    Using Twitter as an official source of information from the school is different from individuals using other social networking sites, such as “Facebook,” Bouchard said. In fact, teachers are discouraged from interacting with students on these social networking formats.
    “Teachers are discouraged from ‘friending’ kids or getting personally involved with technology like this,” Bouchard said. “However, as a principal, giving information as a school, and keeping it strictly business, is a good way to make use of the technology that exists today.”
    Twitter is just the latest piece of technology the school has employed to increase its communications with the parents. Last year, SAD 29 purchased the “Alert Now” system to notify parents of school closings due to weather. That system sends out an automated phone call and/or e-mail to every parent that signs up for the service, notifying them of school cancellations. It can also be used to send out messages about other events going on within the school district.
    According to the online encyclopedia “Wikipedia,” Twitter was created in March 2006 and launched in July of that year. It has rapidly grown in popularity, with more than 300 million users.
    Houlton High School is believed to be one of the first schools in the state to create an official Twitter page. Bouchard will be the only individual with authorization to post to the Twitter account, he said.