What tool is best for publishing notes/announcements/assignments for students and their parents?

Is a class Wiki the easiest tool to publish class updates, list assignments, post handouts and presentations? Flu season is gearing up and I have a student who has missed his third consecutive day of school so far. I need to come up with a way to publish to keep absent students updated as well as provide a resource for all my students and their parents to check homework assignments or for resource materials.

Tags: communication, homework, wikis

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Permalink Reply by Aparna Vashisht on August 26, 2009 at 7:53pm

May I shamelessly promote Parentella here? :D

Parentella is the communication portal for precisely the above.

www.parentella.com

un: Mr. Pencil
pw: demo

parent account:

un: Judy Jetson
pw: demo

You can write a note as a teacher and see how it shows up on the parent's account. :)

Nice to meet you. If you need any help, let me know.

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Permalink Reply by Jack Hutchinson on August 27, 2009 at 4:31am

Have your admins check out Senior Systems for all needs on a school campus: accounting, registrar, etc. Part of this online database system is a report card system (with unlimited commentary space); gradebooks system; homework space; midterm reports, etc etc. It really replaces multiple databases all over the school and puts them in one space. Parents and kids then log in to check anything they need to know in terms of the classroom as well as things like tuition (this is a private school) etc. The teacher-parent-student interface is called My Backpack. They are based in Houston and Marlboro, Mass.

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Permalink Reply by Ammar Elhassan Elmerhbi on August 27, 2009 at 8:02am

Nothing beats edmodo in case you want to upload assignment files, update on homework, assignments, and test days. It works like twitter but it has an enhanced security. Try it instead of a wiki or any other web-based application.
Ammar

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Permalink Reply by Anthony VonBank on August 27, 2009 at 10:52am

I'm going to say make a simple Yola website @ yola.com. You can upload almost anything as a link or file, and it is exceptionally easy. Initial set-up time would be about 10 minutes, even for a beginner.