We are now finalizing our plans for this summer’s updates to our ParentEdge messaging platform. At the moment we have two current feature updates planned and in the works which will greatly improve ParentEdge’s usability for teachers and parents. These two updates were the most requested on our Parent and Teacher surveys from earlier this year. In addition, we have a third update that we are considering however we will be seeking feedback on the necessity of it from teachers and parents:

1. We will be lengthening the amount of characters teachers can enter for the text message portion of each day for secondary schools with multiple class periods. Currently there is a maximum of 15 characters. We will now be increasing the number to at least 30 characters. Depending on the number of class periods your school has daily the number may jump all the way to 70 characters. The idea behind is this to greatly improve the teacher's ability to communicate details to parents. (This was far and away the number one requested feature by all stakeholders so we are thrilled to be putting it in!)

2. We will be replacing the period numbers (1, 2, 3, etc…) in the text message with the first 4 letters of the course name in secondary schools. So instead of a parent seeing the number 2 for 2nd hour they would potentially see MATH or ENGL and so on. Hopefully this will lead to far less confusion for parents who are less familiar with their children’s class schedule when they receive the text message. (This was the second most requested feature by a wide margin so we are again very happy to implement it!)

3. We will be adding an extra information section for only the email message to the elementary teacher interface. This way elementary school teachers who wish to convey more than the current limit of 155 characters available will be able to do so. The text message will not change but the email parents receive will now contain all of the information the text message does along with any extra information the teacher includes in the email only section. This update is in the initial development phase however we need more feedback on it to move forward and implement it.