On Tuesday, the Mat-Su Borough School District announced a new app that allows parents and students to keep up with school news. This is the second app that the district has put out. The previous app was custom-made by student workers, and the new version is produced by Blackboard, a company that makes a number of technology products for schools and colleges. Mike Brown, Executive Director of Operations for the school district, says using an established brand has potential advantages.
“This version’s a little bit different in that it gives us the capacity to grow. There’s not a lot of custom work inherent in the application itself, so it’s not difficult to maintain and add features to.”
With the app, which is available for both Android and iOS mobile devices, a great deal of information is available. Mostly, that information mirrors what is available at the district website. Mike Brown says the purpose of the app is to make that information available anywhere, not just at a computer. While links ranging from the district’s social media accounts to the login page to view grades are in the app, Brown says two particular parts of the district website tend to get the most attention.
“Probably the two most common features or information sets that folks access are the school calendar, so they know of upcoming events and whatnot, and actually what I understand is the second most-accessed is the school menus.”
In addition, the school district plans to use the app as another means of reaching parents in case of emergency, school closures, or other time-sensitive situations.
“There’s a notifications feature, much like there is to sign up for on the district website, so there are these, I guess what we would call them push notifications, where if information is sent out it would notify folks automatically, especially if they were on the move with their mobile devices.”
The app notifications will not replace the current text and email notifications, and are intended as a supplement.
Users can select which school or schools they want to receive notifications and news about, and are prompted to select one or more schools the first time the app is opened.
Mike Brown says the district intends to continue expanding the app’s capabilities, and that one target feature is the ability to register students for school with a mobile device.
