Emails and Text Parents

[cooper]

Does anyone use or a service like ParentMail.

A Email Text message service to parents.

I have been asked to look into this, part of me thinks we should just get parents to tell us there email addresses if they would prefer to recieve there messages like this.

I was also thinking of sending text messages to parents giving a download link to get the latest newsletter ect aswell as reminders.

Looking forward to your thoughts.

Cooper

Sorry if a thread has been made on this subject but couldnt find it after a search.

[RoyG]

We've got ParentMail coming in for a demo the week after next.

All we've heard about it so far has been very positive.

Anyone else had any experience of it?

RoyG

[Sylv3r]

I seen www.edutxt.com offering this at BETT. We will be looking to implementing something similar, this year also so would be good to see what schools are using this service for.

[CyberNerd]

How about mailman self signup

http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/

[Mr_Jones]

How did it go with the systems you put in place?

[Geoff]

No idea about anyone else, but I did what Cybernerd suggested. We have a mailman system running our PTA list.

http://lists.carrhill.lancs.sch.uk/mailman/listinfo/pta

It will be used in anger later this week.

[m2d2]

we use VoiceConnect Informer. Does email, SMS texts and voice calls. It links to SIMS to get names and numbers. It's delivered in prebuilt box which is supported by the company.

Seems to be OK. Once we ironed out the teething problems I haven't been called much by the admin staff.

[Sylv3r]

We haven't signed up to anything as yet, but we will probably go for the SchoolComms system that links with SIMS.

[elsiegee40]

I've been on the parent end of Parent Mail and think it's very good.

The other tool I like as a parent is ParentPay http://www.parentpay.com/ - sort of PayPal for schools. Its' great for paying for trips and topping up lunch cards.

[Mr_Jones]

We had a look at a lot of systems before settling on Keep Kids Safe. Voiceconnect was one of them, but we were met with indifference regarding their security policies... they just didn't seem that bothered that we were concerned! That's the last thing we need, as a school! I'm happy Keep Kids Safe came along, they understood that we needed to be 100% positive that the schools data was safe.

[TechMonkey]

We had Schoolcomms for about a year or two and then didn't bother renewing. Can't fault the company, good tech support but for what we were using it for we can do ourselves cheaper. Never touched the txt side though or advanced school trips pre setting up malarky.

[cooper]

I have been using Parent Mail at 2 large Primarys for a while now and find iit is a good service, It hand free for me as admin do all the work. Most parents have joined now, this it hard part getting everyone on board. We convert most of the attachments to PDF. Had a few complaints when we sent out word 2003 format files.