Communication apps today are as prevalent as smartphones. School administrators, teachers, students, and parents rely on these communication tools to create groups and establish a more connected environment both online and offline.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, parent-teacher communication apps became the main source of contact to maintain education quality. Moreover, with more students staying at home, parents and teachers needed to stay connected to fill the newly emerged gap. And parent-teacher communication apps appeared to be the perfect solution.
Keeping parents informed about their children’s educational progress empowers them. They can help their child improve learning materials and overcome problems that otherwise would have been ignored. A positive parent-teacher relationship is of vital importance.
Conversely, teachers can benefit from communication tools; They are kept in the loop about students’ home situations. Furthermore, communication apps help the teaching staff understand each student’s requirements for enhanced educational performance. This way, they can better meet their personal needs.
With that short review in mind, you must be excited to learn more about school communication apps. So, we decided to curate a list of apps that encourage and empower active engagement between teachers, parents, and students. Are you ready to learn about them? Let’s dive in!
What Is a School Communication App?
Generally speaking, communication apps offer a platform to facilitate communication and teamwork among a group. They help to centralize data and provide easy access and support services through in-app messaging features and an integrated database.
But as we will see later, communication tools are not all the same. They may offer additional features, like client communication or project management.
Nevertheless, they all share one purpose: strengthening internal communication so that members can focus on a shared objective instead of pursuing divergent paths. This is what keeps school communities alive and productive.
Plus, communication apps can offer a broader range of options such as student chatrooms, school leaders’ video meetings, and parent-teacher conferences. Real-time, fast, and proactive communication is what these mobile apps promise.
Benefits of Communication Apps for Schools
A monitored and moderated social network designed to improve parent-teacher communication can address schools’ and stakeholders’ managerial and educational needs. School administration can control the online environment to ensure a secure and cooperative network for students, educators, and parents.
Here are some of the key advantages of employing school communications tools:
Improved Information Exchange
Through a parent-teacher communication app, you can pass along important announcements, news, and school happenings faster and more efficiently. Most communication platforms offer bulk SMS features, email blasts, and notice boards to inform everyone of the school’s upcoming events and current projects.
Safe and Efficient File Sharing
One of the main concerns about the digital world is the growing risk of malware, viruses, corrupted files, worms, trojans, and other harmful computer programs hackers use to wreak destruction. This is why many schools avoid using online communication tools.
At the same time, many educational institutions and schools need to have copies or digital records of important conversations. Many well-established communication platforms are actively improving their security algorithms to address this challenge and allow teachers and students to share files in a secure environment.
Better Monitoring by Stakeholders
Schools’ stakeholders and administrators are genuinely concerned about the quality of education offered in the school. However, they often lack access to functional software and digital resources to track school progress and find shortfalls.
Communication tools and software provide easy access to an integrated and responsive platform, offering insightful analytics on every subject worthy of further examination. Moreover, stakeholders can assume admins’ responsibility, collect and evaluate students’ educational progress, analyze teachers’ performance, and communicate with parents.
Download Our FREE eBook: How to Create an Exceptional School Website
Strategic Planning
When it comes to the education industry, strategic decisions can make or break a brand’s image. Having all the data available and accessing reliable analytics is central to making informed decisions. Communication platforms can offer decision-makers the required information.
But there is more. A school’s mission, goals, and values cannot be fulfilled through a ‘one-man effort.’ We need to discuss our issues and collaborate with colleagues, teaching staff, parents, and students to achieve the optimal outcome. This collective decision-making is what keeps the school’s spirit alive and dynamic.
Even on smaller issues, such as scheduling upcoming exams or school events, it’s always best to have representatives from different groups, so everyone is on the same page.
A review of school communication apps
Now you are probably wondering which apps offer such a wide range of rewarding features. Here’s the list of the most efficient communication tools you can use or buy for your school:
#1 School Webmasters App
Okay, we’re going to talk about our communications app first. The School Webmasters App is designed for the school district as a whole, from the Superintendent or Director level to all administrators, staff, students, and parents. Many other apps we review below are mainly designed for teachers to communicate with students, but ours is comprehensive, serving all levels.
It provides your school with mass notifications, text messaging, voice calls, and all through our parent teacher communication app. Everything syncs with the school’s Student Information System, so it is always current. Connect with everyone, or one-to-one, seamlessly. Teachers can easily message their students’ parents, and everything is delivered in their particular language and archived for future reference if needed.
Messaging and Notifications
- push messages to the App, including two-way messaging;
- send standard mass notifications (voice, text, and email);
- update your school’s website homepage; and
- send stories to your school’s social media pages;
- all at once and from the same place.
Update Your Website
Use the multi-functional messaging app to make changes to your school’s website. We’ll take care of your website all from one place for news stories, videos, photos, calendar items, staff changes, etc.
We’ll Do It For You
School Webmasters is the ultimate customer service company, but we also offer messaging and the App. We will build the App to match the website, keeping your brand consistent and professional. We create it all for you, get the App into the app store, and even help you roll it out to your parents and the community.
From announcements and assignments to parent/teacher communications, the App is totally customizable to help you do almost anything you can dream up.
But instead of listing all the technical things you probably don’t care about, here are a few features that matter most with our parent-teacher communication app.
- Custom forms (with digital signatures)
- Interactive maps
- Engaging news feeds with all your great stories
- Anti-bullying hotline and anonymous tip reporting
- Choose from 40 languages
- Access digital ID (library, cafeteria, on- or off-campus events)
- Customize the look, layout, and feel that highlights your school’s colors, logos, and featured photos
- Subscribe and view calendars (general events, athletic teams, parent groups, student clubs, etc.)
- Upload and access important documents (student handbooks, policies, registration forms, etc.) for viewing, printing, and sharing
- Quick access to the school’s website and social media pages
- Accommodate people with a wide range of special needs (physical motor limitations, limited vision, blindness, etc.)
- Text messaging
- Emails
- Voice calls
- Unlimited number of users
- Shared lists
- Shared groups
- Parent communication portal
- 24/7 unlimited support
#2 Skool Loop
Skool Loop is a simple communication app for schools, parents, and students. Skool Loop App helps parents engage actively in the education and retainment process and facilitates parent-teacher communication.
This also enjoys many in-app features, including parent-teacher communication or interviews, calendars, e-permission slips, notices, absentee reporting, and more. With a school calendar, you can keep track of all school happenings and make sure you don’t miss anything.
#3 ParentSquare
ParentSquare is one of the most successful school apps designed to improve communication, coordination, and engagement between home and the school community. You can plan events, share and download files, upload health screening tests, add paid services, sign-ups, volunteer activities, and more.
Above all, ParentSquare promotes collaborative initiatives and professional communication between school personnel and families to foster effective teamwork. It also gives teachers multiple direct and convenient ways to connect with parents while encouraging students to improve their organizational skills.
#4 Teachers.io
Teachers.io is a communication platform available as a site and as an app. This tool allows teachers to plan their classes with detailed syllabi and materials for each session and share them with students. Teachers can add each class’s coursework, homework, tests, quizzes, and announcements.
Once students set up an account, they can access all this information on the site and the app. We recommend students install the app because they’ll be able to receive instant notifications and direct announcements. Teachers.io is a powerful communication tool with a clean, user-friendly interface.
#5 ClassTag: Class Communication
ClassTag is another popular messaging, media-sharing, and communication tool for teachers, students, and parents. Teachers can create announcements and activities and hold parent conferences to boost parental involvement and interaction.
The best thing about ClassTag is the intuitive interface with incredible customizability. Once you set up your account as a teacher, you’ll have tons of features, a demo class full of sample content, and a step-by-step guide on how to get started.
#6 Bloomz
Bloomz is the FREE app designed to improve learning and behavior management by establishing efficient communication channels between school and home. Parents and guardians can easily sign up on the website to receive the app, email, or text notifications and directly communicate with teaching staff.
Bloomz also provides message translation as part of its premium plan so parents can receive class announcements and posts in their preferred language. You can also receive visual updates on student activities and evaluate their progress. Moreover, Bloomz offers top-notch integration capabilities for importing all files and formats from various sources, including Google Drive or Classroom.
#7 ClassDojo
ClassDojo is an education and communication app for teachers and students. ClassDojo facilitates effective parent-teacher communication. Teachers and school administrators can share and exchange files online and create groups to communicate with parents.
ClassDojo is an excellent choice for international students as well. It supports and translates more than 30 different languages. This software offers great features for assigning students tasks and activities and monitoring their progress.
#8 Schoolvoice
Schoolvoice is a school-parent communication app designed to help schools optimize, monitor, and organize digital communication within the school community and improve parents’ involvement. Schoolvoice is popular for many reasons.
First, it is FREE! It lets parents and teachers stay in touch and inform their children about school-related activities. The interface is extremely simple and easy to use.
And finally, it provides various handy features, including live broadcasting, instant messages, and instant reports.
#9 Klassly
Teachers usually have difficulty organizing activities or assigning and tracking homework online. But with Klassly, none of these tasks will be challenging anymore. You can assign homework in any format (such as photos, videos, documents, or audio files) and activate instant feedback right from the app.
Moreover, school leaders and administrators can also enable the video-conferencing feature to meet one-on-one with parents and prospective parents. Klassly is accessible on mobile devices and the web, but we recommend using the app to best use notification and event-reminder features.
#10 LivingTree Engage
LivingTree Engage is a free communication platform that allows teachers and parents to support each other’s efforts. Admins can create a school calendar—with an inbuilt RSVP option and a volunteer sign-up.
You can access LivingTree Engage through a web version, but rest assured that the platform is also mobile-friendly. Accounts are generally free. However, you should contact the developer for district use.
#11 SchoolCNXT
SchoolCNXT is an extraordinarily powerful messaging app for teachers, administrators, and parents. Messages can be translated into over 80 languages, depending on the language preferences of the subscribers. SchoolCNXT offers a read-aloud feature for parents and guardians with limited literacy to help them use the platform without any challenges.
SchoolCNXT has collected an extensive library packed with how-to instructional videos, FAQs, and educational clip arts about how to get started on this platform. School administrators can also use this tool to plan and announce field trips, special events, or special meetings.
#12 TalkingPoints
TalkingPoints is a messaging app designed to streamline teacher-parent communication through all devices and in any language. The intuitive setup, resourceful FAQs, and customizability make this tool one of the best interactive tools for parents and students.
TalkingPoints allows teachers and evaluators to create polls and collect student and parent feedback on specific topics such as exam difficulty, teaching quality, or school events. With strong, automatic translation and top-notch customer support, you can guarantee that language barriers or practical challenges won’t impact student progress.
#13 Seesaw
Seesaw is one of the most renowned interactive learning platforms with a solid digital portfolio and shiny record. With Seesaw, teachers and students can engage in a unique, creative, and instructional experience and bring their ideas and imagination to life. The platform lets students read and interact with all forms of content, including videos, photos, text, images, files, and drawings.
Seesaw offers a great opportunity for innovative teachers to try new methods and determine each approach’s efficiency. This tool is available on iOS, Android, Chromebooks, computers with Chrome/Firefox, Kindle Fire, and Apple TV. The cherry on top—it’s FREE for teachers!
#14 Schoology
Schoology is a cloud-based learning management system (LMS) for schools to manage classrooms or blended learning. It allows teachers to create, monitor, and share tasks, assignments, and course material. Teaching staff can create course-specific entries and a built-in grade book to assess and track student performance.
Basically, with 18 question types, Schoology goes almost unmatched when it comes to designing exams and quizzes. The flexible, integrated nature of Schoology’s interface makes it one of the most effective school communication tools ever designed. Schoology is accessible through the web version, iOS, Android, and Chrome apps.
Bottom Line
School communication software and apps allow schools and teachers to communicate with parents and students in a safe, user-friendly, collaborative platform. Certainly, with an increasing number of parents who want to play a part in their children’s learning process, these tools are more important than ever.
Parent-teacher communication apps and school communication apps offer different ways for school administrators and teachers to establish a mutual understanding through proactive engagement. This is one of the many components central to your school’s success.
If you want to learn about other elements that positively impact your school’s image and provide higher-quality education, you are in the right place. At School Webmasters, we help schools provide the communication channels that keep all your stakeholders informed and engaged.
We offer comprehensive school communications solutions, from web design and management to social media support, design services, and parent/student communication.
You can easily get a quote right now or contact us (call 888.750.4556 and speak with Jim) and let us point you in the right direction.