The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

Local News

February 7, 2013

Raleigh County Schools debuts app

Raleigh County Schools debuts app

By Sarah Plummer Register-Herald Reporter

— It’s Sunday night and you’re in the grocery store trying to plan a week’s work of lunches and dinners but you have no idea how many days your kids might like to pack their school lunches.

Well, there’s an app for that.

In conjunction with National Digital Learning Day, Raleigh County Schools Network Administrator Jeff Webb and Assistant Network Administrator James Pettry unveiled the first school district app in the state at Wednesday’s board of education meeting.

Pettry showed the board how, once purchased, parents, administrators, teachers and students will be able to access this app from their iPad or smartphone.

A touch of the screen will give the user mapquest directions to all of the county’s schools (something they expect substitutes will love), access to school lunch menus, a look at Raleigh County Schools news, 2012 graduation videos, and access to some of the resources teachers and students use each day.

Moreover, parents will now be able to access school cancellations away from computers and TV.

This app is apply named Raleigh County Schools Mobile App Version 1.0 “The 1.0 represents our desire to have this app grow and change,” explained Webb. “We want feedback and we want to here from our user. We did not just want to develop an app for the sake of saying we have an app. We decided this has to be something that is used and beneficial for the administration, students, staff and parents.”

The app is currently available on Google Play for Android and is expected to be available at Apple by Monday.

Also during the meeting, Technology Specialist Mary Ann Foster unveiled a 13 minute video starring and created by students and teachers from across the district.

“We have digital learning in our schools every day but this was a way for us to celebrate what we do. We had all 29 schools and over 12,000 students participate in Digital Learning Day,” she said.

The video, which is one of the largest collaborative efforts between schools that Raleigh County has ever attempted, features students in skits, performing songs about school and technology, interviewing “famous” alumni and celebrating their school culture.

Students from each high school videotaped their feeder schools and more that 7 hours of tape was edited down to 13 minutes in Independence High School’s digital editing lab.

The video will be available on the county website and outtakes from individual schools will be on school websites soon.

Foster thanked Bethany Daniel and Rick Lane from Independence High School for their work on the project.

— E-mail: splummer@register-herald.com

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