We surveyed parents who are currently receiving ParentEdge homework text and email messages. They responded in force. We are looking over the results but here is a quick preview of what they said. We couldn't be happier!
ParentEdge Blog
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Our Mission at ParentEdge
I designed this system because I saw a need for schools to communicate
on a more personal level with parents. I have heard parents constantly complain that they want to be more involved with their kids classwork, but don't know how to begin. I thought about this and realized that in the parent-child school relationship dynamic, the child has all the power. The child has all the information about school responsibilities, assignments, daily study requirements, etc. Fact is, the child knows what is required in school for the next day: whether they have a test, reading to do, a workbook to complete. The parent doesn't know unless, quite simply, the child volunteers the information. Typically, the only time the parent has the informational edge is retroactively talking about missed assignments and failed exams. At that point, the academic damage has already been done.
My goal for this service is to completely change that failure dynamic and allow parents to be proactive with their kids daily school responsibilities. ParentEdge is designed to make it easy for parents to reach out to their children on a daily basis and have a conversation about school.
ParentEdge is designed to provide the catalyst for this conversation using what has become the standard for communication in many of our lives: the cell phone.
Over the past decade we have seen a slow but constant technology transformation from desktop to laptop to mobile (cell phone) communication. Peoples daily lives have become more hectic and driven by the realization that for good or bad, information and communication are instantly available anywhere and anytime. Our ParentEdge service acknowledges that concept and embraces it. That is why I designed the service to send information through email and specifically text messaging.
Many peoples lives (mine included) accept text messaging as the standard tool for daily communication. It is convenient, quick and easy. It doesn't require the time and focus needed for a voice call nor the length and formality of an email. Text messaging filters out the emotional baggage and provides simple objective connections to the people in our lives.
It is the perfect delivery medium for our service. It provides us with a quick, efficient, easy way to notify parents about what is happening in the child's school classes.
It is my hope and belief that as ParentEdge becomes the standard medium for parent-child school communication, academic success rates for students will increase dramatically. I know as a student, teacher and now as a parent, the number one reason kids do well in school is because their parent's are involved in their lives. I believe ParentEdge provides the tools necessary for parents to begin and continue this involvement starting in kindergarten all the way to graduation.
This is our belief; this is our cause; that is our mission.
If you have benefited from ParentEdge or would like more information,
please don't hesitate to contact me personally.
Chris Hren
ParentEdge Founder
313-743-4910
chris@schooledgemobile.com
To read more about who we are here at ParentEdge and what we do please click here. Thank you.
Our new Referral Program will be announced soon!
In the next few weeks we will be unveiling a new referral program for current schools using ParentEdge. This new program will give schools a chance to get free quarters of ParentEdge if they refer new schools / districts to our program. The hope is that as many schools as possible will have a chance to benefit from ParentEdge messaging. Many more details will follow in the coming weeks.
Teacher and Administrator Survey Now Open
As mentioned in the previous post we are beginning to plan our ParentEdge updates for this summer. As our current users of the system, we want to hear what you think. With that in mind we have designed several surveys to get your feedback on ParentEdge and how it functions. Please take a few minutes and give us your thoughts. As many of you know, your feedback directly leads to changes in our software to better suit your needs. Please select the survey which best fits your role in the school. Thank you.
Administrator Survey
Teacher Survey
Parent Survey
Update Plans for ParentEdge
As the school year somewhat comes near its inevitable and glorious end we are beginning to plan our summer updates out for ParentEdge. We are posting here now to gather any feedback you, our ParentEdge users, might have on the current version of ParentEdge.
We will be opening a teacher survey shortly that will allow teachers to provide insight and input into ParentEdge and what they would like to see from it in the future. In addition, we currently have a parent survey available. We would love to know what parents think and also what can be improved.
Our current plans for ParentEdge this summer include potentially removing the numerical headers from our text messages that represent each class period and replacing them with the first 3 letters of the class name. We think this might help make some of the texts from schools more usable for parents. In addition, we are going to be increasing the character length limit teachers has available to them for each class. Currently it is set at 15 characters per class. At the moment the plan is to at least double that to 30 characters per class if not more.
Stay tuned for more details!
Pleased to welcome a new school!
Dearborn, MI - February 9th, 2014 - We are proud to announce that ParentEdge homework texting and email messaging will begin at Big Fork Middle school in the near future. Big Fork Middle School is located in Big Fork Montana. So far we have had an exceptional experience working with everyone from Big Fork Middle. It is a great school and we are very happy to be working with them. There is no doubt here in the ParentEdge office's that the setup and communication to get things moving will be very smooth.
A few comments in case there are any questions from stakeholders:
Teachers:
If you have any questions regarding how ParentEdge works, how your classes are setup, how to enter data, or anything else please get in contact with us directly. We are happy to provide detailed support for any issues or questions you might encounter so please don’t hesitate to email us at support@schooledgemobile.com. In addition, here are some links to our support sections that might help answer your questions:
Parents:
Thank you for receiving the homework texts that ParentEdge sends out and thank you for being involved in your child’s education. We hope that you find ParentEdge to be a valuable and worthwhile tool to better help your child succeed academically. If you have any questions please email us at support@schooledgemobile.com and we will address them immediately. In addition, here are a couple of helpful links that might provide you with more information on ParentEdge. If you wish to opt out of receiving messages, please click here:
Finally: Parents, we would love to hear from you regarding your thoughts on ParentEdge. Please take the ParentEdge survey linked here and let us know what you think!
Sincerely,
The ParentEdge Team!
Special Ed Teachers and Intervention Specialists: We can help!
In an effort to help you and your special ed students succeed we have a new idea to suggest. Recently we began adding the email addresses of special ed teachers to their caseload students so that they would receive the homework emails as well. We don’t want to intrude on your phones though so no one was signed up to receive the homework texts.
We have found that this simple and easy step has made it much easier for special ed teachers to reach out to their students and make sure they are doing what needs to be done for academic success. It doesn’t alter the homework texts or emails currently being sent out to parents either, it simply is an extra addition for special ed teachers to help out.
If you are a special ed teacher in a school currently using ParentEdge we would be happy to set things up for you so that you can receive these daily emails for your students. Please speak with your principal about it or email us at support@schooledgemobile.com and we will take care of it for you!
Also, to make sure credit is given where due, this idea was not originally ours. One of the first schools to use ParentEdge, Hudson High School in Hudson, NY, suggested the idea. The principal, Antonio Abitabile, thought it would help his teachers out immensely and so far we have heard great things!
ParentEdge by the Numbers Infographic!
So lets review some of the numbers for ParentEdge to this point. Our ParentEdge application has been available to schools since September of this year. At this point we have more than 20 schools and districts currently using ParentEdge as their go-to way for quickly and easily communicating homework to parents every day through texting and email. Our homework texts and homework emails reach over 8,000 parents a night and that number continues to grow as more and more parents sign up with ParentEdge.
To give you an idea of the numbers:
Parents receiving SMS homework texts daily: 7800
Parents receiving email homework updates daily: 4800
Unique total number of parents receiving SMS homework text, homework email, or both: 8,300
Percentage of Parents opting out of receiving the ParentEdge daily SMS homework text or email: 4% (smaller is better!)
Virtual phone numbers used by ParentEdge to this point for each school: 23
Total homework texts sent out this school year: 275,000 These texts contain homework information, study reminders, and other important info from teachers.
Total homework emails sent out to this school year: 186,000 emails with homework info.
Ramsey Junior High School begins using ParentEdge!
Dearborn, MI - January 22, 2014 - We are proud to announce that ParentEdge homework texting and email messaging has begun at Ramsey Junior High School which is located in Fort Smith, AR. Ramsey Junior High is a great school and we are proud to be working with them. The setup and communication has been outstanding between all parties involved and we are thrilled that the Ramsey Junior High community has bought into ParentEdge.
A few comments in case there are any questions from stakeholders:
Teachers:
If you have any questions regarding how ParentEdge works, how your classes are setup, how to enter data, or anything else please get in contact with us directly. We are happy to provide detailed support for any issues or questions you might encounter so please don’t hesitate to email us at support@schooledgemobile.com. In addition, here are some links to our support sections that might help answer your questions:
Parents:
Thank you for receiving the homework texts that ParentEdge sends out and thank you for being involved in your child’s education. We hope that you find ParentEdge to be a valuable and worthwhile tool to better help your child succeed academically. If you have any questions please email us at support@schooledgemobile.com and we will address them immediately. In addition, here are a couple of helpful links that might provide you with more information on ParentEdge. If you wish to opt out of receiving messages, please click here:
Finally: Parents, we would love to hear from you regarding your thoughts on ParentEdge. Please take the ParentEdge survey linked here and let us know what you think!
Sincerely,
The ParentEdge Team!
Our Parent Survey is now open!
In the next few weeks we will begin reaching out to parents, teachers, and administrators for feedback on ParentEdge and what they think of the service. It is our hope that by gathering this feedback we can improve ParentEdge to best serve the needs of our schools. We want to hear what you think so we can do better.
With that in mind we have created a new parent survey page where we hope to hear from you. You can get access to it here.
In the next few weeks we will be adding a teacher survey and an administrator survey as well.