Describe your project. What did you do? How did you do it?
This year, we wanted to increase the impact of the Instagram page, @rapidevent. We came up with many potential ways of reaching out to the school and community more, as well as developing a foundation for getting more information out to students.
We did this by coordinating a schedule for posting, individualizing our roles so that there was room for individual creativity, regular meetings, and a WhatsApp group chat.
What problems did you run into? Were you able to solve these challenges? How did you solve these challenges? Is there anything you would do differently?
The biggest problem we ran into was content. It is difficult to figure out ways to reach out to the student body when we don’t actually know what the students are doing that warrants attention on social media. Therefore, a lot of our ideas failed to be realized. Next year, the social media team should be more diligent with school outreach and consistent in their efforts to boost the page.
What did you learn? Were you able to learn new skills or strengthen previous ones?
I learned basic graphic design through using the app Canva to create informational posts.
I also learned the importance of effective communication on social media. Running a popular social media platform seems easy in theory, but in reality, requires a lot of diligence, creativity, and patience. I understand now why social media managers get paid so much.
Impact: How might your project positively impact the social and emotional wellbeing of students/our school? What can be done to increase the impact of this idea on the school?
@RapidEvent’s goal is to communicate what students need to know, either about events in the school or potential opportunities. We wanted to expand this goal to foster a sense of community at Riverside by integrating Rapid achievement with technology. By promoting the page more and diversifying our content, we can accomplish this.
Desirability: What could you change to make your project more desirable to students, teachers, administrators, parents, or the community?
Diversifying our content to include student/teacher achievement, community opportunities/events, and other cool social media stuff.
Integrability: What would you change to make this idea easier to integrate into a school setting?
I would give students the platform to publicize the cool things they are doing. By allowing and advertising student submissions, we can get a better idea of what the student body is doing and how to best target the platform to them and their achievements.
Feasibility: Looking back, what would you change? What would you keep?
I would increase the amount of accountability on the team, possibly by increasing the number of members. I would also enforce specific roles and ensure that team members are capable of fulfilling them. I would keep everything else: it’s a pretty well-oiled machine, we just wanted to do more than we had the time for.
What did you learn from being a part of this project?
The importance of communication, both on social media with a community and between members of a team.
