How often has a staff member or parent emailed to ask where an important video is housed? Was it on the Twitter post from 2 months ago? Or is it on the Facebook page? Perhaps it was emailed or placed on the district website? Having a reliable way for families, community members, staff, and students to access important district media is one of the most essential pieces of a well-run school district. Without an organized approach to sharing media, large problems occur for all stakeholders. However, many districts find themselves using methods of media sharing that don’t quite check all the boxes for their needs.

Schools have begun to embrace social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram to get media in front of families and community members in real time. It seems like a logical solution, as many people use these platforms daily. However, most social media platforms lack an archive of just the media content that is shared. Instead, users must scroll through post after post to find the relevant video they are searching for. Though social media is a great way to get information out to people in real time, it is not a good solution for creating a reliable archive of content.

Many districts use newsletters to distribute relevant media and information out to their staff, students, parents, and community. Newsletters have been a reliable medium for keeping stakeholders in the loop for many years. However, online newsletters can take hours to put together and to distribute out to their intended audience. The person creating the newsletter must have a grasp on not only the technology to create the newsletter, but also knowledge on basic design principles to make the newsletter look professional. Even with relevant media and information, a poorly designed newsletter will turn people away from a valuable resource.

When sharing resources with stakeholders, districts often want to make data-driven decisions. Tracking the number of hits a post has gotten, how many people have opened a newsletter, and in some situations, who has accessed the communication are all important pieces of information school districts want to review when determining the best option for their resource sharing process. From an internal perspective, knowing who has accessed specific resources within the district can help increase accountability for staff or students. Imagine being able to see how long someone has watched a video, when they have paused, or skipped ahead during the video’s playback. This can be incredibly helpful when tracking professional development credit or student homework. However, it is hard to find a solution that both archives media in an easy solution AND provides tracking data.

Luckily, there is one easy-to-use solution that can checkmark all the boxes that other solutions cannot. MyVRSpot offers a variety of tools to share out media to all stakeholders. The MyVRSpot Showcase tool has taken the pressure off staff trying to share media by providing an easy to manage archive solution. The Showcase tool can be shared via a static link or embedded directly into a district website, meaning that any staff member with a MyVRSpot account can be their own webmaster. Staff can also work together to manage a Showcase, creating a collaborative environment for district administrators and teachers.

Digital newsletters (and much more!) can be created using MyVRSpot’s MediaSpot project solution. MyVRSpot provides a number of pre-made templates, with sleek and professional designs ready to be quickly edited and shared. MyVRSpot has made MediaSpot intuitive and easy to learn, with drag and drop creation tools. Educators can add videos, pictures, images and even document files with a click of a button. The various sharing tools and embed links provided for each MediaSpot project makes providing media and other information to stakeholders easy and efficient!

Finally, MyVRSpot offers tracking data on all media items shared. MyVRSpot users can easily navigate to any media item in their account, select the tracking icon, and see immediately the views and activity on that media item. In-depth data is also available, including the ability to set up different time frames for data and detailed analysis on how other MyVRSpot users interacted with the media item.

Let MyVRSpot take care of your media sharing woes. Contact us today!