Dr. Jill Johnson, President of Class Intercom, spoke about social media in the education space at Seward Rotary
Dr. Jill Johnson, Seward Rotarian, president of Class Intercom, a social media management company, was the featured program speaker at the Club meeting on
August 24, 2022.
Dr. Johnson was a high school English teacher, professional development consultant at ESU 6, and vice principal at Seward High before moving into her current role. She received her doctorate degree from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln and published her dissertation work, “Technology Leadership Qualities in Secondary School Principals in Nebraska who Support Student-Led Social Media Teams.”
As the only social media management platform created specifically for educational use, Class Intercom is a simple way to manage social media profiles for a single school or an entire district. Across the country, educators, administrators, school public relations specialists and students are using Class Intercom to create, schedule, moderate, publish, monitor and archive great social media—all in one place.
An expert in social media management resources, security and regulation, Ben Pankonin, the Class Intercom CEO, founded the company to foster both collaboration and communication in schools. After seeing a school that managed all their social media profiles and passwords on a sticky note, Ben knew that he had to create a solution to help all schools manage this. Class Intercom was born to create a secure and centrally managed solution for social media
collaboration for education.
Founded in 2016, Class Intercom is still considered a startup, however, the Lincoln-based company is expanding quickly in the post-pandemic education landscape. Johnson noted, "Although we primarily serve school districts, we also have clients from religious organizations, higher education, municipalities, nonprofits.” She noted that they serve over 800 schools across the nation and are also involved worldwide with clients in seven countries. She did note that
Seward Public Schools is a client and uses the services of Class Intercom to coordinate their social media efforts. In fact, she first became a believer in the Class Intercom platform when she was developing and managing the social media program at Seward High School.
One of Johnson's main joys with the company is to represent Class Intercom at educational conferences, and she is often called upon to speak about building social media teams, social media best practices, and digital citizenship. She shared examples of the many avenues of social media in today’s world and commented on the impact that these media’s play in representing a school district in a positive light. “Everyone has a story, and that story is going to be told by
someone. We encourage school leaders to take control of that narrative and use social media to highlight the great work being done in their schools. Class Intercom helps manage these amazing stories.”
Another of Johnson’s passions is creating new resources to help serve schools. She is currently working on a process to use with students in schools who have encountered disciplinary action due to inappropriate online activity that is disrupting the education environment. The program based in restorative practice research is currently in the pilot phase and strives to take a negative situation and turn it into a positive learning opportunity that teaches digital responsibility in a
very authentic way through the security of the Class Intercom platform. Johnson concluded her presentation with trends in social media noting that they are “here to stay.”