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11 Best Apps For Teachers To Communicate With Parents
Establish a strong communication between parents and teachers using these 11 amazing apps.
Devesh Pinjani
Content Writer
Reading time: 6 minutes
In recent years, owing to the proliferation of smartphones and mobile apps, schools and parent communication have arrived at crossroads.
It is more crucial than ever for teachers and parents to be able to maintain open lines of communication now that more students are opting to stay at home and more programs are being offered online.
Apps that facilitate effective and seamless communication between instructors and parents have emerged as a potential solution to the plethora of issues that have arisen as a result of this situation.
Every educator should get on board with the idea of adopting a parent-friendly app that fosters engagement and transparency.
Fortunately, it has never been simpler to establish strong parent-teacher relationships by engaging in proactive communication between the two parties. Let’s take a look at the best apps for parent-teacher communication!
Contents
What makes a good parent-teacher communication app?
Before deciding which app is the best, it’s vital to have an understanding of what distinguishes a good app from the others.
In order to determine which communication app would be most suitable for your requirements, we have devised a set of criteria that makes a good communication app:
- User interface: Since this app is mostly going be used by an elder age demographic, it is crucial that it is simple to operate.
- Feature-packed: The whole purpose of these below-mentioned apps is to make communication between parents and teachers effective and for that, it should have notable features like mass messaging, media integration, calendar management, language translations, etc.
- Analytics/reports: A good communication app should be capable to collect and share analytics/reports pertaining to students, teachers, and parents.
- Security: Since communication is mostly confidential, it is crucial that the app protects the data from any kinds of data breaches and leaks.
- Third-party integrations: A good app should give users the option to integrate their account with other third-party apps like Google and Microsoft.
- Price: Probably the most important aspect of them all, is the app worth the price one’s paying.
Top 11 apps for best parent-teacher communication
TimeSync
TimeSync is an online appointment scheduling software that helps to reduce no-shows by sending reminders through WhatsApp, SMS, and email.
With TimeSync, parents can easily book appointments with you through an email embed, a pop-up window, a CTA button, or a standalone booking page on the school’s website.
Additionally, TimeSync’s qualifying tool allows you to create custom questions to filter out certain groups of parents. This ensures that the most knowledgeable and qualified teachers can best handle the meetings to improve the productivity and efficiency of your appointments.
To add on, you can collect payments for upcoming events through PayPal and Stripe integrations.
Pro plan: $7/month |
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TalkingPoints
TalkingPoints is a non-profit, multilingual, two-way positive parenting platform that assists parents and teachers in maintaining communication with one another.
Teachers can add recipients by creating a spreadsheet that includes the students’ names, the teacher’s name, and a phone number.
Both teachers and parents have access to a large number of customization features with TalkingPoints. For example, teachers have the option to send a message to either specific students, classes, or the entire school. There is also the ability to include videos and photos.
In the meantime, parents have access to a mobile app or text messaging service. As soon as the teacher finalizes the participant’s list on the software, they can start sending messages or scheduling meetings with the parents.
Remind
Remind is a cloud-based software that gives educational institutions all the tools they need to build a communication channel between educators, students, and parents.
It is designed specifically to be used in an academic setting and hence offers secure and direct communication with individuals, sub-groups, and the entire class.
Besides messaging, Remind also offers some other notable features like adding multimedia into your conversations, adding unlimited recipients, the option to choose between text, mail, and notification reminders, and collecting funding for school events.
Thanks to these features, Remind proves to be an excellent tool for not only communicating but also managing several academic activities like organizing any event, reminding students and parents about a quiz or test, making changes to the schedule, or sharing any other important information.
ClassTag
ClassTag is a cloud-based parent-teacher conferencing platform. It features a messaging function, making it possible for businesses to establish lines of contact between students’ parents and instructors.
As soon as they sign-up, users (parents and teachers) get access to a singular-merged dashboard, through which they can post messages, review critical announcements (including videos, pictures, and calendar events), and manage all their activity and data.
What’s more is that ClassTag being one of the best on this list, makes sure they provide their users a ton of features including, SMS and Email-push notifications, automatic text translation, multi-device (android and IOS) integration, protection from a data breach, etc.
Klassroom
Klassroom (Klassly) is a mobile and web-based elementary school digital classroom. The user interface resembles a social networking site, and the focus is on instructors and parents communicating.
But that’s not all. Klassly offers its users much more than just messaging or scheduling video meetings.
Using Klassly, teachers may publish assignments, add comments, images, videos, documents, or audio files, create a homework, and review students’ academic performance.
On the other hand, parents may help their kids share photographs, and comments, submit project material, notify a teacher of an expected absence, share their approval regarding school trips and events, etc.
This minimizes any confusion between the parents and teachers since, now they are aware of everything going around the student(s) at all times.
Basic (teachers only): $ 19.99/year/class Basic: $ 59/year/class |
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ClassDojo
ClassDojo is software for classroom management that enables academic institutions to communicate with students as well as their parents via the use of photographs, videos, and personalized messages.
From the teacher dashboard, teachers can use a feature known as “stories,” which makes it possible for them to publish images, videos, links, or files; make announcements at the school or class level, and communicate (privately or publicly) with students’ parents. The solution provides a wide variety of features, including step-by-step instructions for project activities, event sharing, submitting feedback, etc.
All students’ data is regularly updated and added to their portfolio, which stays with them from year to year, letting teachers record and keep track of students’ overall behavior.
Meanwhile, families also have the ability to “like ” or leave comments on published posts, translate them into several languages, and receive immediate notifications for any new submissions or messages.
Classdojo Plus: $7.99/month |
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Bloomz
Bloomz is cloud-based school administration software that centralizes and streamlines parent, teacher, and student communication.
Using Bloomz, teachers are able to create two-way contact via messaging and arrange forthcoming events such as parent-teacher conferences or other types of meetings on a calendar. They also have the ability to construct student portfolios, manage the submission of assignments, and follow the behavior of students in order to generate reports.
Moreover, they can get even more out of Bloomz by using its mobile app, wherein, they can formulate digital activities, deliver homework, and approve student submissions on a central platform while being completely confidential.
ParentSquare
ParentSquare is a cloud-based solution designed for PreK-12 students. It enables academic institutions to simplify communication and other operations when it comes to parent-teacher associations.
ParentSquare offers users a consolidated platform that comes with dashboards for parents and teachers.
On one hand, the teacher’s dashboard has an in-built message template library, which enables users to send requests to hold conferences, ask for volunteer sign-ups for an event, and send quick warnings in the event of an emergency, (like an accident, extreme weather conditions, etc) via phone calls, text messages, in-app notifications, and school websites.
Meanwhile, the parents’ portal can be used to add and update basic contact data, see student report cards, review school calendars, pay fees, and establish alert settings.
Brightwheel
Brightwheel is an all-in-one childcare management software for centers, preschools, daycares, camps, and after-school activities. The platform offers digital kid assessments, extensive parent communications, online enrollment, automated reporting, paperless invoicing, and more.
Using Brightwheel, administrators can manage classes, rosters, and family contacts. For instance, it allows instructors to take and share images during class, record daily happenings to communicate with families (real-time or log and email at day’s end), and do rapid head counts in the classroom.
Teachers can review school calendars to schedule activities as well as record student progress via text or voice and report it directly to their families.
Meanwhile, Brightwheel offers full transparency to the parent and their real-time newsfeed gives parents photographs and remarks about their child’s activities.
Premium plan: Custom quote |
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Illumine
Illumine was designed with global educators’ needs in mind to streamline childcare operations. It offers parent communication, billing and payments, lesson preparation, digital attendance, virtual classrooms, and children evaluations.
Illumine’s parent-teacher communication system immerses parents in their child’s learning. Teachers can share photographs, videos, and documents and share lesson plans and assignments with parents.
Meanwhile, another helpful feature Illumine offers is the childcare evaluation tool that helps parents and instructors track a child’s strengths and weaknesses and presents a real-time graphical representation of their development.
Illumine is ranked among the top parent-teacher communication programs and is used by over 450 schools worldwide.
Standard Plan: $0.50/student/month Business Plan: $0.99/student/month Enterprise Plan: $1.99/student/month |
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Kaymbu
Kaymbu is a family involvement and classroom recording software for early learning institutions. Kaymbu offers photo, video, and document sharing for parental participation. iOS and Android applications allow teachers to share and connect with parents while in the classroom.
Kaymbu uses private visual messaging to link families to their school-aged children. Using this, families can exchange classroom images, videos, and tales and even integrate graphical documentation to create narratives to help in visual learning and make yearbooks, portfolios, and school portraits.
Kaymbu also allows instructors to link classroom action to the institution’s curriculum to track each student’s behavioral and cognitive growth. Meanwhile, teachers can communicate these observations to their families via email, SMS, and calls.
Basic plan: $8/month Premium plan: Custom quote |
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Conclusion
These days, there are so many great options for parent-teacher communication, it can sometimes be difficult to decipher which one is best.
Hopefully, this article has helped you clear up any confusion or doubts. The apps listed above come highly recommended— in particular, TimeSync, Illumine, and Bloomz.
But, it’s best that you personally see which one fits best with your requirements and choose that.
Devesh Pinjani
Devesh is a content writer at Novocall.
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