Trip updates to parents for students on foreign trips

[mdrabble]

We have a school event where some staff and student have gone to Ecuador for 3 weeks and the trip leaders have said they would give parents updates on the tip and and where possible.

 

The afternoon of the trip leaving they come to me and ask me if this can be done and can I do it!!

 

Anyway, very quickly I created a Exchange Group, manually added parents emails in the group - set permissions do only staff can email the group etc. and told the trip staff to put the email group into BCC so parents cannot see other email addresses etc....

 

 

So to avoid this next time - how do other schools send trip updates to parents from the trip leaders which away?

 

Many thanks

[synaesthesia]

Facebook

[hardtailstar]

Teacher sends emails/texts to an Admin staff member and they use School Comms to send details/messages.

[FishCustard]

Teacher sends emails/texts to an Admin staff member and they use School Comms to send details/messages.

 

This is how we did it at a previous school - worked just fine. Some pictures were posted on the website along the way as well (they emailed them to school and we added them).

[TechMonkey]

We've started using What's App. Use a dedicated trips phone, so staff personal number doesn't get sent out. Create a group and email out the QR code and link. Set the group to Admin posting only and make sure a second person is set to Admin in case the worst happens.

 

So far parents and staff have loved it as it means no having to login to email systems (I'm not talking Outlook or Exchange, something like School Comms or MIS), easy to send quick messages and photos, parents don't have to rely on patch phone service to receive text messages and they are used to using it in their day to day lives. In an emergency I can see it being useful to get information out quickly. My only concern is there is no way to lock the group down or know who has joined without adding parents numbers to the phones.

[Rob_D]

Frog site for each trip.

Pre-trip all the information/forms go up.

During the trip staff can add photos/updates using FrogSnap/Frog app on their phones. (Not that any have ever done this)

[Sylv3r]

Our staff pass the details / photos to us and we update facebook.

 

We've got a cohort of sixth formers in Sri Lanka at the minute and a group of 50 Year 7's have just returned from France - worked well with minimum fuss. The facebook updates automatically appear as a widget on our website - so no reason for those parents without facebook to miss out.

[rad]

Twitter, staff get school details to post pictures etc

[compsue]

Staff send me details, photos etc and I upload to our blog which then gets pushed out to FB and Twitter. Parents love it.