By Adriana Ungerleider ’12, Contributor

Named a “Cool School” by WLWT-TV due to its groundbreaking use of technology in the classroom in February 2008,  in the past year, the school has earned status as a technologically advanced school in a new direction by using social networking to connect the student, faculty, and alumni communities.

CCDS has had huge success in the past few months in creating accounts on social networking sites, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, and MySpace.  These sites provide news and updates on upcoming events to students, parents, faculty and alumni. 

The Scroll’s former Facebook manager, Isaac Guttman, ’10, commented that “because the overwhelming majority of CCDS students use social networking sites (and log on often), Facebook groups and fan pages are great ways to circulate information around the community.”

CCDS’s page on Facebook has links to Scroll articles, YouTube videos, upcoming community events and student achievements.  And, with over 450 fans, the CCDS Alumni Group on Facebook has become the most efficient and convenient way of keeping alumni up-to-date on school events.

Mr. Aaron Kellenberger, the director of admissions at CCDS, has been closely involved in creating “official” Facebook, Twitter and YouTube pages for the school.  He sees social networking as a great way to incorporate different forms of media and technology into the CCDS community, as well as a convenient way to connect with former students and families. 

However, another goal of the social networking jump was to attract the attention of prospective students and families, and judging by recent interest in open houses and orientations, it has been a huge success. 

“For our first open house this fall, about half of our inquiries came in through our Facebook advertisements,” Kellenberger said. These new forms of advertisement have not only raised interest in the school, but have also decreased CCDS’s dependency on print media and word-of-mouth to get the interest of prospective students. 

Another new form of networking in the Development Office is the CCDS’s Twitter page. Kellenberger said that “Twitter has been great for broadcasting those short updates that would usually be shared through the webpage… it has really helped us connect with the parent and alumni networks.”

The Scroll has also been closely involved with social networking in the past few months, especially in conjunction with the switch to an online newspaper.  With accounts on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, The Scroll can now provide timely updates and highlight featured articles in a whole new way. 

Former Video Editor Jordan Komnick ’11 said that social networking has become “more popular and more common as a platform for advertising and spreading information, and is generating a lot of interest within our school.”  Komnick, along with many others, has become a  fan of The Scroll’s Facebook and YouTube pages, which provide links to current articles as well as videos. 

Earlier this year, a video of Rameez Khan’s buzzer-beating 3-point shot against Summit was posted to The Scroll’s YouTube page, and has had over 750 views since.  Todd Legette’s tribute to Michael Jackson has also been hugely popular, with over 900 views.  Before the YouTube page was established, these amazing videos might only have been presented as a few images and a short article. 

Scroll reader Anisa Tatini ’12 explained that, in her opinion, “Scroll readership has gone up since the online jump because the new media options such as videos, photo galleries and sound clips on the website have attracted a whole new set of readers.”

For a school as technologically progressive as CCDS, social networking was perhaps the logical next step in a year that has seen a jump to online publications and social networking resources.  However, CCDS was beaten to the social networking punch by several other local schools, such as Summit Country Day and Ursuline Academy. 

So why has it taken CCDS until now to tap into the convenience and efficiency of such sites as Facebook, Twitter and YouTube? 

“The vast majority of youth today are obsessed with the Internet and use Facebook and YouTube regularly”, says Hannah Stewart, ’12.  She is a fan of CCDS on Facebook and often watches videos posted by the school, but wonders why it has taken so long for CCDS to make social networking a priority. 

However, Guttman shared that he’s “not sure if the widespread use of social networking sites at CCDS has really been so sudden.”  The CCDS alumni group was established on Facebook in 2009, and many sports teams and clubs have been using Facebook and MySpace to keep in touch and post pictures and videos.  Thanks to the laptop program at CCDS, students have constant access to social networking sites, giving CCDS an edge on news distribution, event updates, and community.

This year, though, communicating through techonology at CCDS has really taken off.

Photo by Adriana Ungerleider ’12