As I'm trying to plan my parent communication for the year, I have discovered some great tools. In fact, I have discovered too many great tools!
The past two years I have relied mostly on paper based communication. Yes, parents could e-mail me, check grades online, and I had a class website (that was neglected last year), but I was not as diligent in involving parents in the class as I should have been.
This year I want parents to be informed about all aspects of the class and the best way to do that is through technology. Plus, it saves on printing and papers to keep track of and it's faster. However, I don't want parents to have to sign-up for a bunch of sites/apps. Unfortunately, to cover all my bases, it looks like I will be asking parents to join three sites.
Here are the sites I have looked into:
ClassDojo is great! It provides a student behavior tracker with parent communication. They have added some great features since the site first started that allow teachers to message parents and see if parents have read the message. I love the fun and colorful graphics, too!
ClassMessenger is a site I just learned about this year, and I am very excited about it! It not only allows you to message parents, it also allows you to send out surveys and sign-up forms! Everything is private, so only the teacher can see responses. And the best part is they have released some awesome new features such as a donations section and the ability to schedule a group meeting. My favorite part is the newest addition coming out on the 21st - the ability to schedule parent conferences! It will allow the teacher to set available dates and times that parents can sign-up for, and once the slot is filled, it is blocked out. Students can also join ClassMessenger, but I think that would work better for a middle or high school level.
My district uses
Edmodo and I really like using it with students in class. Edmodo allows parents to see what their child is working on in Edmodo. I think this is a nice feature, but it would only be beneficial if Edmodo is used regularly. I'm more of a once in a while user.
I just discovered
Livingtree through a colleague, and at first I was really excited by what I saw. This site has many of the same abilities as ClassMessenger, plus it allows students to post to the community. In a way, it acts like a combination of ClassMessenger, Edmodo, and Seesaw. Unfortunately, it looks like all parents can see all student posts. For privacy reasons, I am not comfortable with that.
Remind (101) feels like the granddaddy of parent communication through texts, and it's still a great tool. I tried to use it my first year of teaching, but only two parents signed up. Remind has been updated, but it just doesn't do as much as the other options available. I think Remind is better for middle or high school parents.
Seesaw is a great way to share student work with parents. I don't like to do a lot of worksheets, and many times parents never see what their students have created digitally. Seesaw allows students to upload videos or pictures of their work for parents to see. Parents can even leave comments. It's like a digital portfolio, and parents can only see their child's work.
I
REALLY wish there was a site with all the features of ClassMessenger, Seesaw, and ClassDojo combined! Right now it looks like I will be using those three sites/apps.
If you haven't looked in to any of these options, please click on the link and investigate! I did not give enough information to do them justice!
If you know of any other parent communication options, please share them!
