The Mahomet-Seymour School District launched a new website and app early this morning in order to better communicate with the community.
The district’s website had become out-dated as technology and website viewing habits drastically changed in recent years. Now, with a clean, responsive design and an app that can push out notifications to those who have downloaded it, the District hopes parents, grandparents, staff, students, community members and newcomers will be able to find the information they are looking for when they visit.
Network Specialist Jared Lynn and Instructional Technology Coordinator Chris Forman, a former teacher a Lincoln Trail Elementary, were tasked with the redesign when they accepted their positions within the District last spring.
Lynn fielded options and bids from several website and app development companies in Champaign-Urbana, but Little-Rock-based startup Apptegy offered a trademarked website and app combination that made financial sense for the District’s budget.
The District entered into a three-year contract totaling $37,000. $9,400 has been paid in upfront set up fees, and the District will pay $300 plus $.20 for each student as long as the website and app are being utilized by the District.
Forman said the District is not concerned about the investment with a start-up company because the product is currently becoming utilized by school-districts throughout the country. Mahomet-Seymour is the first district in Illlinois to sign with Apptegy, but districts such as the Havana School District is now using the Apptegy website design without the app, and two other local school districts are in the process of development with Apptegy.
A benefit of being the first district to work with Apptegy in Illinois is that the organization also has a referral program that will produce discounts for Mahomet-Seymour if the District refers clients to them.
The production of an app, website and cost were not the only things Forman and Lynn liked about Apptegy’s product, though. With a technology team of two, the management of the platform allows each school, both administrators and teachers, to have a hand in information going on or coming off the site while also giving them the capability to post real-time events from the classrooms.
The clean and organized structure will not only help teachers access the educational programs they use with students throughout the day, but the layout will keep information organized when it is added.
Several aspects of the website and app are aligned. Parents will be able to access a live-feed of Twitter and Facebook accounts, receive district notifications, see upcoming events, communicate with their child’s teacher, access Skyward and see their child’s lunch menu on the app.
Additional features, such as classroom websites, district, school and board of education information are available on the website.
The Mahomet-Seymour School District app can be accessed on both Google Play and the Apple App store by searching for “Mahomet Seymour.” The District’s former website, ms.k12.il.us has been redirected to mahometseymour.org.
“From a perspective of ms.k12, like a lot of districts in the state and the country, that was their original address,” Lynn said. “They have migrated to something that makes more sense to them and their community. Mahomet-Seymour makes more sense than ms.k12. While people understand what that is now, people outside of the district do not understand. That ms.k12 may have made sense at one point in time, in today’s world, that doesn’t make sense anymore as an identity.”
