Digital Smarts - Home-School Communication – The Digital Route

According to a 2016 report, there’s been a steep drop in the number of parents who believe that more intimate forms of communication—face-to-face meetings with teachers, for example—are the most effective means to convey important information about students. The study in fact found a growing acceptance of digital methods. Enter simple communication apps like ClassDojo, Spotlight, Remind, and Seesaw that allow teachers to send mobile texts, video summaries, and other alerts to parents about important school activities or their child’s recent academic or behavioral progress.

Taken together, these new ways to communicate are giving parents a deeper look into their childrens' performance and experience in the classroom, while forging tighter relationships between schools and families. Educational apps have even played a vital role in updating parents about snow days and disasters, while advanced features translate report cards into languages from Arabic to Vietnamese. Is your school using one of these apps? What has been your experience?