Sunday, September 14, 2008

Your Kids Teacher Just Texted You

Imagine its 10am, you'rein the office enjoying a cup of coffee and the phone text alarm rings. It from your kids school to tell you that they aren't in today.

The BBC reports that in a recent survey of 1,493 parents polled by government education technology agency Becta one in 12 parents would like school reports on their children's performance texted or e-mailed. 68% of parents said they wanted schools to use such technologies to keep them up to date more frequently with 15% wishing to be updated at least once a month, and 85% were updated four times a year. In addition 8 out of 10 wanted more feedback on how their child was doing.

To make the point more relevant nearly 75% said that they monitored their bank balance by phone or online at least once a month. The Internet and mobile is now clearly becoming the communications tool of choice and with it comes the need for it to be used to keep parents informed on a regular basis. This brings into question how schools embrace the technology and create community networks that cover all the relevant stakeholders; administrators, teachers, students and parents. Schools are often the hub of a community and technology offers the ability to knit these together far more effectively.

Interestingly it also offers the publishing community are far more effective community portal than the pure educational one.

Can you imagine all those emails sent from parents to schools to say Paul's not in today as he is feeling sick. But who sent it?

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