ceilfors

Thanks all for your responses and feedback, this community is awesome. Hopefully I haven't missed anything, but I have summarised all of the requirements listed in this thread so far here: https://ceilfors.notion.site/Requirements-for-a-school-communication-app-ab32da49fbca4ad794ae7e85e1cf5f9d. PDF and mobile is differently one of the theme I've been getting in my research too. What are the risks or concerns of parents sharing the same e-mail? (I can see issues with phone numbers for emergencies).

Great shout on email bounce and complaints, thank you. It's interesting to hear that EduLink is having this free-for-all without structure. That's a good idea on consistency. One of our PTA members is quite frustrated that she's currently proposing an email template for the school to use. It feels like the emails come from different people with different styles - some send a Word doc, some send a PDF, and some put the info in the email body. I'll make sure to include the idea of reporting and planning. I agree that it'll be useful for the school to be able to see how many messages they're adding within that week, for example.

You're right on point about the need for school communications to be formal and lengthy. This has been one of our main frustrations. The frustration comes in many facets, but adding to yours, I would say the top ones are timeliness (some tasks were sent five weeks ago), accuracy (sometimes people write Thurs 24 Mar instead of Fri 24 Mar), relevance (receiving information that's not for me), quantity (as you mentioned, some days there is a spike in messages), among others. Regarding laziness, believe it or not, some people are still struggling to receive emails from Parentmail. At first, I thought that was nonsense, and that the school should have reached out to Parentmail support. But after searching through the edugeek forum, I discovered the level of support people receive. Apart from technical issues, some information is buried in an email that was sent four months ago. Parents/carers could have organized the information, but I've spoken to parents who are really struggling with time (two job shifts, etc.). The app I'm building essentially organizes this information for them. As for how this is being translated to WhatsApp, it's a bit hard to describe, but essentially, I'm trying to change the model and structure of school communication. I do support other communication channels such as email! I agree that schools need to get better at communicating, and I think it comes in two folds: skills and technologies. I'm hoping that a tech solution can help reduce the learning curve. I actually appreciate the criticism. I need feedback to know if this is something that's worth spending my time on, so thank you!

Thanks so much for your input, Dave, I really appreciate it! At the moment, the app is designed to focus purely on parents and class information, so there's no need for me to have access to children's details. I will definitely look into Wonde, thanks for the pointer! Regarding the bulk email issue, that's exactly what I'm addressing in my solution. I've found that people tend to miss important information when it's sent via email, so I'm using WhatsApp instead, which people seem to be more responsive to. Additionally, I'm structuring information differently. If you don't mind, I'd love to get your feedback on what I've developed so far. Would it be okay for me to PM you? I want to validate my idea before I spend too much time on this! Thanks again for your help!

Thank you very much for your response. It is very helpful! I am curious to know if schools typically have a standard vendor risk assessment or process to evaluate a vendor. I am also interested in learning more about the security considerations that schools have. It is useful to know that there are more MIS options available beyond SIMS. Apart from parents' phone numbers or email addresses, which the communication system will pull, what information do schools expect to see in the MIS that the communication system needs to push to MIS? Regarding integration, is there a standard protocol for this (like GP2GP in the healthcare industry), or is this generally something that the vendor will have to support for each MIS?

Hi all, I am new here and not related to educational IT. My background is in building software products as a software engineer. Ever since my daughter started school, I have gained my first experience of educational software such as Parentmail and others. As a parent, I have been frustrated by the experience I have had, and I have been interviewing many other parents and carers (I have been doing this for six months now). Most parents and carers seem to be experiencing the same problems as me. Consequently, I have started building a solution for them to use, and they really love it because I have built it with a parent-first approach in mind. I currently have 200 parents on-boarded all with positive feedback. During my research, I also spoke to our PTA committees and learnt that school administrators are equally frustrated by parents who email them back and forth, which adds to their workload, even when the information has already been sent to the parents via email. Schools are now sending manual reminders for events and requirements, which further adds to their workload. I am currently trying to collect more evidence before pitching the school to use it. However, given that I have not built any software for schools before, I don't really know what requirements schools normally have. Unfortunately, I don't have access to school admins or IT yet. Does anyone share a similar problem from the school perspective? If so, I would be keen to chat and understand what schools typically need. I would be grateful for the opportunity to connect and discuss, and potentially trial it in your school. P.S. Initially I thought of open-sourcing this, but after reading this thread (http://www.edugeek.net/forums/educational-software/174627-opensource-educational-software-4.html), I'm still reevaluating if I want to open source this. Knowing the state of the budgets for the school, my objective is to make this as affordable as possible, or even free for the school to use (I can't find any info on how parentmail price their service). I've looked at edulinkone demo as well, tested it to few parents, all of them are overwhelmed by it (including me). Regards, Wisen