Great Tools and Apps for Teacher-Parent Communication

October 26, 2014
Students with parents who are up-to-date on their child(ren)'s lives tend to perform better in school. Fortunately, technology offers a variety of ways that can save teachers time as well as keep parents engaged. Here are some notable tools used by teachers and parents.

ParentSquare 

Gives teachers a host of ways to collaborate with parents, like newsletters, calendars, fundraisers, and volunteer requests.

Kaymbu 

Automatically shares classroom photos, notes, and other documents with parents for real-time updates.

Kidzloop 

Helps parents meet other parents in their neighborhood for playdates, as well as share photos with relatives.

Kidfully 

A new service that provides reviews and guides for local kids' activities. Currently offered only in part of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Want more? Check out these collections of tools.

Parent Communication 

 This list is curated by educator Shannon Jackson.

Summer Links for Parents 

 This one is curated by instructional technologies teacher Kate Reece.


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All That Teachers Need to Know about Remind (101)

September, 2014
Remind (formerly Remind 101) is a 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.
To help you learn more about Remind, I selected for you this   set of video tutorials .

1- The New Remind Walkthrough

2- How to message individual subscribers

3- Remind Attach: Send photos, assignments, and presentations

4- How to add a class on Remind

5- How to schedule a message for later on on Remind

6- How to message multiple classes at once

7- How to delete a class on Remind

8- How to print a custom PDF on Remind

9 - Watch how Clintondale High school uses Remind101

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3 Excellent Free Tools to Communicate with Students Parents

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.

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SchoolCircle- A Great Free Way to Communicate With Parents of Your Students

September 3, 2014
SchoolCircle is a new free web platform that allows teachers to easily communicate with students parents. SchoolCircle is very easy to use and has a wide variety of useful features that make it similar to Edmodo. As a teacher, here is what you can do with SchooCircle :

1- Create Circles
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)

2- Create Class events
You can use the Event feature of SchoolCircle to invite your students parents to the events you create for your class for instance: field trips,school concerts…etc. All the parents invited will receive email reminders on the morning of the event.

3- Messages
You can use messages to share updates, upload homework assignment, post pictures from a filed trip. Messages also allow you to upload and attach pictures and files .

4- Tasks
This is where you get to ask your students parents to do certain tasks: for example, sign a permission slip, bring an item to school, order a yearbook…etc. Parents will received reminders of the tasks the morning that are due.

5- Documents
This is where you can give your students’ parents online access to important documents: reading lists, instructions, homework and special project assignments, etc. Parents will be able to see recently uploaded files, or search for a file from months ago.

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