NNHS varsity cheerleading coach Michelle Restko said when she was in high school, her cheer team used a system called the “phone tree.”

The coach would call the first girl on an alphabetized list and then that cheerleader would call the next person until the last girl would call the coach to let her know the message had been delivered to all team members, Restko said.

Now, social media is widely used by teachers and students as a platform for collaboration and communication. Teachers and coaches are beginning to use social media to reach students and even facilitate learning in the classroom.

Restko’s “phone tree” may seem time consuming–especially if members of the team didn’t pick up.. Five years later, Restko has swapped the “phone tree” with an app called GroupMe, which she uses to contact all of her athletes at once. With this app,  Restko can add multiple contacts to one group message to communicate much more effectively.

Additionally, teachers are finding it easier for students to collaborate through websites and apps, giving students more opportunities to utilize technologies familiar to them.

Career and Technical Education teacher Joyce Kafer uses Twitter as a way to promote projects from her marketing classes and encourages students to use the app as a way to share their school work with the community.

The Tom and Eddie’s Burger challenge, an assignment in which students design burgers to sell at the restaurant located on Naper Boulevard, provides an occasion for students to market their product on social media.

Kafer said it’s important for students to gain digital marketing experience since the majority of modern companies use tools like Instagram and Twitter to market their products.

“Marketing uses social media. It’s much more efficient,” Kafer said. “If you weren’t able to use what is being used in the marketplace, [the project] wouldn’t be authentic.”

Kafer is not the only teacher who has noticed an adjustment in the way social media encourages students learning.

Director of Infrastructure Technology and programmer for the Digital Learning Initiative, Joe Jaruseski, said that technology and social media have become an extremely effective platform for student discovery. Jaruseski said  he has been pleased with how well students are adjusting to the Chromebooks.

Although several social media sites are blocked on the district-provided devices for safety reasons, Jaruseski said he still thinks smart social social media use during student’s free time can be beneficial.

“I think social media, when used correctly and carefully, has a tremendous amount of potential for education,” Jaruseski said. “It opens you up to all different kinds of perspectives, opinions, ways to collaborate and even doing a little ‘E-arguing’ with people.”

Junior Kelly Leonard, a self-proclaimed avid social media user, said she would not be the student she is today without it. For Leonard, messaging is an easier way to approach peers and ask questions outside of the classroom.

“Adults often say that social media negatively affects us because they didn’t grow up with it,” Leonard said. ”If they did grow up with it, they would see the positive benefits that we see, like meeting new people and sharing ideas.”