DepEd, gov't adopt #walangpasok Twitter hashtag for class suspensions

Attention tweeps: If you want to know if classes are suspended in your school due to bad weather, just search the hashtag #walangpasok. Just make sure the users are official. 

 

Beginning Wednesday, the government adopted the unified hashtag for announcements on the cancellation of classes due to bad weather and other crisis situations.

 

Starting today, the government will be using the unified hashtag #walangpasok for class suspension announcements. — DepEd (@DepEd_PH) August 15, 2012      

 

The phrase "walang pasok" is the Filipino translation of "no classes."

 

The unified hashtag #walangpasok was developed in cooperation with our friends from the media and other gov't agencies. — DepEd (@DepEd_PH) August 15, 2012      

Pioneering use brings order to chaos  

GMA News and Public Affairs' social media team pioneered the use of the hashtag on Twitter, and has been urging schools and government agencies to adopt it to enable the filtering of vital information, especially in times of crisis.

"The unified hashtag will make it easier for media and anyone else to consolidate class cancellation information from schools and local governments, which needs to be communicated to students and their families as fast as possible," says Howie Severino, vice president for multimedia journalism of GMA Network. "It will certainly make it easier for us, who previously had to gather this information from a wide variety of decentralized sources. The Twitter hashtag system is an attempt to bring order to chaos," he added. New government policies on class suspensions  

Earlier this year, some local government officials and individual schools had taken to Twitter to announce class suspensions during bad weather due to a new policy. But many others still depend solely on texting or phone calls to media agencies, a tedious and often unreliable method in which some agencies get the information before others.  A hashtag on Twitter means media agencies will have an equal opportunity to get to the information without waiting for a phone call or text message. 

 

Malacañang adopted this school year a new policy whereby local government and school officials would be in charge of announcing class suspensions in the absence of storm warning signals.

 

The DepEd noted the guidelines for the automatic suspension of classes in case of a cyclone:

Automatic class suspension guidelines: No classes in Kindergarten for areas in signal no 1; No classes K to HS for areas in signal no 2. — DepEd (@DepEd_PH) August 14, 2012

@hbellen In the absence of signals, LGU will decide on suspension. — DepEd (@DepEd_PH) August 14, 2012

 

— TJD, GMA News