November 18, 2016
Engaging parents in classroom learning is vital to students intellectual and cognitive development. It allows parents to keep track of their kids learning, provide support when needed and be an active part in constructing an encouraging school culture. This can only be done through establishing strong and solid bonds between teachers and parents and through connecting and developing personal relationships with parents. There are several online platforms that can tremendously facilitate teacher-parent communication and we have already reviewed some of them in previous posts here in EdTech and mLearning. However, today we are highlighting two more tools that can do wonders when it comes to fostering teacher-parent communication . These are :
1- Classtag
This is another great web tool that allows teachers to connect and collaborate with parents within a single platform. Some of its main features include:
- ‘Teachers can organize events, get volunteers, schedule parent teacher conferences, send beautiful automated newsletters, share important announcements and fun learning moments with parents – all in one place.
- Parents can share their interests by completing a fun quiz and give you unique visibility into who they are and how they can be of help.
- Teachers have complete visibility into family support in their classroom: who is reading your announcements, who is volunteering and who hasn’t been paying attention for a while. Take targeted actions with one click.
- As a Parent Leader or School Administrator you can organize all your classrooms in a few clicks, gain unique visibility into parent engagement and share your school stories that go straight into the classrooms you want, ensuring everyone reads them.’
Class Messenger is a good tool that facilitates communication between teachers, students and parents. This tool , designed specifically for k-12, is also available as iOS and Android App. Class Messenger offers 7 types of specialized two messaging that include: . messages with pictures and documents (Dropbox and Google Drive integration); surveys; timeslot meetings (parent-teacher interviews); group meetings; donations; volunteer requests; and order Forms. Additionally, all numbers and personal information is kept private: no members can see a teacher’s phone number and parents and students can’t see each others numbers.
