September 5, 2014
Maintaining a steady and seamless channel of communication with students parents is just as important as the teaching and learning that takes place in class. Through engaging parents in their students school life, they will be able to stay updated about their kids learning, their needs and scholarly achievements. This will also give students an extra dose of motivation to work hard to please their parents. Thinking about some web tools to help teachers build communicative ties with parents I came up with the list below that comprises some of the best tools to use for this purpose. The great thing about these tools ( at least ClassDojo and Remind) is that they allow teachers to communicate with parents via text messages without revealing phone numbers.
1- ClassDojo
ClassDojo is a powerful classroom management tool for teachers. It is a service for recording students behaviour and building positive rapport with students in class. ClassDojo captures and generates data on behaviour that teachers can share with parents and administrators. A few months ago ClassDojo released an excellent new service that allows teachers to seamlessly communicate with students parents via exchanging messages. There are two types of messages teachers can send through ClassDojo : 'Direct messages' which are messages that can be sent to parents on an individual basis , and 'Broadcast Messaging" , these are messages to be sent to parents as a whole group. Check out this guide to learn more about ClassDojo.
2- Remind
Remind (formerly Remind 101) is another great free messaging service that allows teachers to send messages to students and parents from different devices (computer, iOS phones, and Android phones).Recently, Remind released some new features that make it possible for teachers to communicate with students and parents not only through text messages but also via short audio messages. Teachers can now record a 15 seconds voice message and send it over either on an individual basis or on a group basis. Similar to ClassDojo, both your phone number and your students' are disguised so no one will get be able to see it. Check out this guide to learn more about Remind.
3- SchoolCircle
This is a new web tool for facilitating communication between teachers and students. SchoolCircle allows you to create circles for your classes. A circle is a space you designate for your class and where you can invite parents to join in. You can can use circles to organize class events, assign tasks, share documents, messages, files and pictures. The cool thing about Circles is that when you invite parents to join your class circle you also have the option to designate a 'room parent' who can take be entrusted with the management of that task ( e.g invite other parents, create new circles, share content with other parents…etc). Learn more about SchoolCirlce from this review.
