DAPHNE, Ala. — Daphne High School started using a new tool this past school year to connect the classroom to the community, Principal Meredith Foster said.

She has plans to use iHigh to bring parents and members of the community into the school virtually. ihigh — a service offered to high schools around the county — hosts and streams school events for free.

“The vision is for teachers to use it to promote the activities going on in their classroom. We want to bring the classroom into the community and vice versa,” Foster said.

“The service is absolutely free to the schools,” David Bannister, vice president of the National Elite Schools division of iHigh, said.

The service is funded in part by advertisers, Bannister said. “We have a group of very selective, ‘Disney Channel’ (types of) advertisers that are age-specific so they are 18-and-under approved.”

The school’s introduction to iHigh began after the football team did so well at the state championships, which caught the attention of the service.

“David Bannister, who works for iHigh, contacted us. Any contract that any school in Baldwin County enters (into) has to be reviewed by Tom Waters in the Central Office. He reviewed the contract and gave us approval,” Foster said.

Once the approval was granted, the school began building the school’s site, ihigh.com/Daphne. The school started small, but in the coming year, Foster expects usage to blossom.

“We started using it this spring to do some minor sporting events like softball games and some of the games had been recorded by the opposing team who already had a contract with iHigh — just to get us started, to show what it would look like, Bannister uploaded those onto our site as well. We had our big kickoff at graduation,” Foster said.

Foster said the school’s graduation video received 9,000 hits within the first week.

“Daphne is really creating their own Internet TV channel,” Bannister said.

In the upcoming year, Foster said, members of the community can expect to see a variety of sporting events and footage from classrooms.

“We are going to use it for all school-wide events, even classroom events. It is going to really explode once we start getting more equipment.

“We have got to purchase some equipment.

“We got a grant from Walmart that will pay for some more equipment. That will enable the teachers to use it to stream live from their classrooms and things like that when they have special things going on,” Foster said.

Foster said the service, above all, will help families stay in touch and informed about major events.

“First of all, it enables family members and friends to view the things that are going on in the high school. It would give me the opportunity to do a weekly announcement session with parents so I could get the word out about things that are going on in the school and be more visible that way with the community —  and they wouldn’t have to be here (or watching live),” Foster said. “It could just be archived on the website.”

One of the added benefits of the service, Foster and Bannister said, was the increased visibility of standout students, in athletics and performing arts.

“Of course, it gives athletes and students who are participating in fine arts or other activities more visibility with recruiters or college representatives. You can see, especially with some of the athletes, that is where the website initiated,” Foster said.

Bannister said such visibility is a bonus to the service.

“It is really creating a lot of visibility for the schools. It is creating a great venue for what I consider to be the kids that are mostly underserved, meaning that if they show a school play online, or tennis, golf or softball, these are sports that typically don’t get a lot of press or TV time. The schools are able to stream and put those kids and those teams into the spotlight and allow them to get the recognition for their efforts,” Bannister said.

The technology requirements — on the school’s end — are rather basic.

“It is simple and inexpensive equipment,” Foster said.

“If anyone has a video camera and they have a video-out (function) from their camera — which virtually every camera does — you can connect that to a laptop that has Internet connectivity, connect to the software we give to the schools, which takes that video coming from the cameras and converts it to a Windows Media Player file that uploads to the Internet,” Bannister said.

Foster said the training for the service also is simple.

“It is a quick training and Bannister from iHigh came down in May and he trained some of our teachers,” Foster said. Daphne Mayor Fred Small was also trained, Foster said, because he has children at the school involved in many activities.

“Any representative that a coach might select to film could be trained easily. A parent could do that as a volunteer,” she said.

Daphne High School was selected for iHigh’s elite school status, which has allowed the school to use some extra tools on the site. Though it was not the only school that has signed a contract with iHigh, Daphne was the only school in Baldwin County to broadcast graduation live via handheld devices.

“There are only three schools with an elite school status in Alabama. We were lucky enough to get it. What it means is that the things that are streamed through the website are also available on your Blackberry, your iPhone or your Droid,” Foster said.

The phone broadcasting will be offered to all schools at some point, Bannister said, but the elite schools get the first chance to try out new services from the site since their audience is typically higher than most schools.