Website: PlanetHS
What does it help with?
PlanetHS improves student, parental, and community engagement. Specific functions include the following:
• Team, club, and program management
• Communication among students, coaches, teachers, and parents
• Collecting data that correlates student extracurricular activity involvement with total student success
• Certifying athletic eligibility
• Coach management
• Pre-participation athletic web forms
• Athletic training support and injury research data
What grade and age range?
PlanetHS can be used in K-12 schools, and also has limitless applications in sports and clubs outside of school.
Is this core/supplemental/special needs/extra-curricular/professional development or what?
Supplemental and extracurricular
What subject, topic, what standards is it mapped to?
PlanetHS is mapped to several National Education Technology Standards, including NT.K-12.1, NT.K-12.2, and NT.K-12.4.
PlanetHS provides an alternative to traditional technology systems such as Word, Excel, PPT, Outlook, Gmail calendars, etc. PlanetHS exposes students and athletes to a unique platform, a modern user interface, and responsive design. It allows students the opportunity to experience relevant technology on multiple devices including desktops, tablets, and smartphones.
PlanetHS allows coaches, teachers, and staff to delegate responsibility to their students and athletes while keeping full control over what goes onto the site. The “Leadership Permission” enables students and athletes to draft items to go onto the site to help Teachers/Coaches with mandatory communication, curriculum, and extracurricular obligations. This in turn teaches students/athletes appropriate use of technology, social implications, and depth of knowledge for alternate technology systems.
With PlanetHS, students/athletes can draft e-mail and text notifications to students, parents, teachers, coaches, athletes, faculty/staff, and a combination of these audiences. Once the correspondence is in the pending status, a member of the school staff reviews the draft and approves the communication to be sent to the specified audience.
PlanetHS also provides digital lockers for students/athletes to store media and provides teachers/coaches the ability to set up collaboration groups for specific audiences so that students/athletes may collaborate in real-time digital discussions and media-sharing.
What is the pricing model?
A one-time set-up fee plus a fee based on the level of integration, the number of students, and number of years based on scope.
Are there services around it?
PlanetHS provides modular training to support use and engagement of the system. PlanetHS also engages the local community and provides community service organizations the ability to alert students and staff of volunteer opportunities available. A Community Service hour verification and tracking system is built in.
What makes it unique?
PlanetHS is a responsive website that promotes the total student by correlating data to show the effect of extracurricular activities on student achievement. It gives teachers, coaches, schools, and organizations, a relevant, safe, and secure opportunity to communicate with their students, athletes, and parents. PlanetHS is meant to be easy and a time-saver for teachers and coaches because it was built by teachers and coaches.
The PlanetHS platform delivers school-moderated digital communications, powerful engagement tools, and attractive sponsorship modules, all supported by database analytic capabilities to inform and empower these critical activities.
PlanetHS has also developed a student extracurricular portfolio to help students keep track of all of the activities, clubs, teams and service projects that they participated in during their high school careers. This feature supports the PlanetHS goal of developing the “total student.” which emphasizes the importance of both extracurricular activities and academics in leading to student achievement.
A description of the characteristics—how is it designed for user interface, user experience? What instructional design principles are at work here?
PlanetHS provides a safe and efficient way for teachers, coaches, administrators, parents, and students to communicate. The entire platform was built based on teachers’ actual needs and input. PlanetHS has worked very closely with pilot schools and teachers to develop a system that alleviates major pain points in the day-to-day life of a school community. PlanetHS takes the old pen and paper system of communication, facility reservations, voting, community service hours, athletic eligibility/registration, and extracurricular scheduling into the digital age without modifying schools’ current approval process. Surveys, polls, and elections can be created and tabulated without the inefficient use of paper ballots.
PlanetHS was originally created as a live-streaming platform for high school athletics. Today, the live-streaming capabilities are used not only for athletics, but also for performances, meetings, video newsletters, and graduations. PlanetHS’ live-streaming platform is simple to use regardless of a user’s technical background—streaming can even be done from a laptop webcam.
Teacher reviews:
“The South Carolina High School League [SCHSL] is pleased with more than just the eligibility component that PlanetHS offers our schools. The additional communication functions are beneficial to the students, coaches, parents, and athletic programs as a whole. South Carolina schools have been steadily progressing in the advanced use of PlanetHS and we look forward to an even more productive relationship with them as the school year continues. The professionalism and expertise of the PlanetHS staff is second to none. “
—Jerome Singleton, SCHSL Commissioner
“We now have a safe and secure way to communicate to our students and parents concerning a wide range of topics from academic information, schedule changes, and sport updates. Add to this a superior Planet HS support team that is quick to resolve any technical issue or set-up process you have, and you have a five-star organization that will meet your school’s student/parent communication needs.”
—Mark Davis, School Coordinator, Dobyns-Bennett High School, Kingsport, TN
“I use PlanetHS every day in my classroom to promote communication and encourage more student participation in the educational process. Each day communications are sent to students and parents to update them on what we are doing in class. Using PlanetHS for classes makes a teacher’s job easier and fosters student achievement.”
—Tom Armstrong, School Coordinator, William Blount High School, Blount County, TN
“PlanetHS has met and exceeded the needs of my teachers and the requests of parents. Providing a secure online environment with unlimited storage, live-streaming events, creating individualized calendars, offering one-way texting and notifications for staff, managing community service hours, and generating revenue—while fully supported by a friendly staff— make PlanetHS the most logical choice for schools.”
—Ginni Jabbour, Technology Coordinator, Maryville High School, Maryville, TN
