Goals
- Facilitate easy parents, teachers, students communication
- Available on mobile and in emails and on paper (how many parents need this?)
- Message tagging: priority, which class it is for
- People can subscribe and unsubscribe to a particular tag
- Technical features
- integration with existing social networks
- integration with existing social networks
- Technical wishlist
- Automatic transfer of all Y1 subscribers to Y2 etc every year (this can be manual at first but would be handy to have)
- end to end message encryption
Solutions
Options to consider (preliminary list - brainstorming):
- Diaspora (has commercial hosts)
- Signal - free, private, and works on Chromium, iOs, Android has END TO END encryption
- uses proprietary Google libraries https://www.fsf.org/campaigns/priority-projects/voicevideochat
- integrates with twitter and facebook and wordpress
- Signal - free, private, and works on Chromium, iOs, Android has END TO END encryption
- gnusocial - no integration with other social networks?
- friendica - integrates with many social networks. end to end encryption?
- https://github.com/friendica/friendica-addons
- twitter, ifttt (facebook?)
Does not look useful
mailing lists?no end to end encryption- where to host? how much?
- ability to browse past messages in a user friendly way?
Extra: Problems with the current setup
- a lot of paper based communication from school to parent (from 1B, from 1, from entire school)
- laborious and not environmentally friendly to make (for the school)
- easy to lose or forget (for the parent)
- message delivery to multiple parents/carers/guardians is nonexistant
- a lot of places to keep track of (a mess)
- classdojo (website for teacher to parent messages and back)
- facebook (communication with other parents)
- a folder with papers
- may require multiple logins to keep track of (low importance but this is a problem)
- everything is not encrypted in any way whatsoever
- teacher does not see parent-to-parent communication at facebook
Extra: more detailed Requirements
- messages from school to
- parents
- everyone in year N (ie everyone in year 1 sends it to 1A, 1B, 1C, etc)
- all in a group (ie 1B)
- everyone at school (all parents of children in any grade)
- parents
- messages from parent to parent
- within a class (1B or 'everyone year 1')
- within a group (school greens, P&C, etc)
- teachers should see these messages, particularly within their own class
- message delivery to multiple parents/carers/guardians
- delegation of authority (e.g. if parents are out of town for a week how does the uncle get messages)
- easy removal of access of an abusive parent/carer/guardian (to prevent stalking, kidnapping, etc / to follow a restraining order)
- parent can subscribe and unsubscribe to particular groups
- some subscribe require admin approval if parent is not a member of the group- messages from parent to teacher and back, usually within just one group (ie 1B)
- ability to receive messages on a smart phone (email should work in theory)
- this is needed for parents who are not tech-savvy, do not have email/facebook/etc
- ability to receive messages on paper (pick them up at school or deliver to a postal address)
- this is for parents who do not have any digital devices or digital accounts- attachments support (images, doc, pdf)
- ability to 'roll over' from one year to a next one (when a next year starts, we need to transfer parents from one year to another one)
- ability to mark messages as urgent if needed? see message precedence
- ability to easily view messages received last week, etc
- ability to mark messages as read / unread? done / not done? message tags? (this needs more thought; email should work in theory)
- single login to all apps used for this (not 'login to app x to talk to teacher, login to app y to get messages from school')
- message delivery and receive messages to social networks such as Facebook, sms, email, etc (perhaps even queue paper notes for delivery)
- "use twitdere or andstatus and get push notifications " instead of sms, for smartphone users
- audio or video chat?
- communications monitoring, check SugarCRM and CivicCRM
- tagging of groups or users with tags (?)
- end to end encryption
Extra: Currently in use (at various schools)
- skoolbag
- for school-to-parent communication
- emails expensive, but free with about $500 (=number of students)/year subscription.
- school enews
- for school-to-parent communication
- about $400 a year for web news plus bulk mail example pricing
- Medium: 101-600 students
- Custom App (and Bulk Email)
- Once off: $495 setup, design and training
- Per Year: $475 per year
- School Enews App
- Once off: $195 setup and training
- Per Year: $345 per year WITH bulk email OR
- Per Year: $245 per year WITHOUT bulk email
- Custom App (and Bulk Email)
- ...
- SchoolStream app
Extra:
- ClassDojo
- for parent-to-teacher-and-back communication
- daymap
- features "The Daymap Parent Portal can be a great central place for parents to access school communication"
- Facebook
- for parent to parent communication
- Google Groups
- for parent-to-parent or school-to-parent communication
- has email
- free even private groups, like a mailing list.
- hard to view messages history from mobile.
- moodle
- need to check (Adelaide High School uses it)
- paper
- for example 'blue folder' for school-to-parent communication (teacher puts notes into it by hand every day and this is put into a child's backpack)
- laborious and inefficient
Schools listing (* = opportunity classes school)
By size (SA):
Several:
- adelaide (SA) click 'portal' at the right top - uses moodle and outlook and daymap
- *caringbah - School Enews app + Subscribe for Email Updates + facebook + twitter
- coogee - School Enews app + Subscribe for Email Updates + facebook + twitter
- glelunga (SA), parent portal, daymap?
- malabar - schoolbag + option "subscribe for email"
- *miranda public school - SchoolStream app + facebook
- maroubra - facebook + twitter, no apps, no email subscription?
- rainbow street - ?
- randwick - wordpress + skoolbag + school enews, facebook, google groups/chat
- south coogee - skoolbag, facebook
- pembroke (SA) (click 'community' -> 'portal login') uses silverstripe cms for the communication portal?
- woodville (SA)
- *woollahra - School Enews app + Subscribe for Email Updates + facebook _ twitter
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