Clubs on Ion
TJ had a storied tradition of club communications happening in Facebook groups. This happened because Facebook used to be the technologically savvy platform for high school students to organize in the 2010s, and it ended up sticking. Facebook groups tend to be an easier way to diffuse information to hundreds of people compared to Instagram groups. However, this meant that club info would be pretty hard to come by if you weren’t in the right groups, and Facebook’s own system for what content it serves you on your page is pretty hit or miss.
Fortunately, the school’s student systems administrators maintain a platform called Ion, TJ’s intranet system. Students use Ion to check the bell schedule, sign up for clubs, access their webmail, check out nodes from the cluster, and submit assignments for various CS classes. In any given day, a student would log into Ion dozens of times.
Find the news in one place
We rolled out a pilot feature to create listservs for student organizations that could be emailed to student emails and shown on Ion. Club news sits beside the schedule and the eighth-period signups, inside the school’s own system.
Subscribe to a club
Following a club’s news is as easy as signing up for eighth period. As a student signed up for an extracurricular block, they were now also given the option to one-click opt in to receive news from the club. The school already maintained lists of student leaders for each school-sanctioned organization, so it was easy to add a feature where club leaders could send announcements through the mailing lists.
Get the announcement in your inbox
Although club news is prominently featured in the same location that schoolwide announcements were posted by administrators, for the avoidance of any doubt, they also functioned as a club listserv. TJ students had access to @tjhsst.edu accounts, and we took advantage of TJ’s webmail system to also disseminate information to subscribers through email.
We rolled this out as a beta in December 2024, with TJ Theater Arts, Chemistry Society, and Class Council posting their news on Ion, and in 2025 another club asked to join so students without Facebook could follow along. This wouldn’t have been possible without TJ’s student system administrators.
The launch in tjTODAY ↗Ion’s code ↗
Ion’s logo and source are GPL-licensed.