Communicating with students & parents

Does anyone have a good way to e-mail with students, advisors and parents. We use Firstclass and it is has no special education-oriented features and looks like it is still trying to compete with Outlook. In a perfect world, it would be nice to send an e-mail to a student and cc their advisor, another teacher and maybe a parent.

Anybody have a firm grip on e-mail?

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Permalink Reply by Cameron Foster on February 17, 2009 at 4:45am

G'day John, I've been trialling google's suite of features like google docs, sites, mail (obviously) and have been really impressed. It is a hassle setting up (but they all are) - but being able to share more of what happens in the classroom with the home-environment of students has been a huge hit with parents. They feel a lot more involved in what is happening.

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Permalink Reply by John Faig on February 17, 2009 at 4:50am

Cameron,

Thanks for the thoughts. I agree that Google Docs are excellent tools. In this case, I am looking to share individual information and it needs to be specifically targeted with e-mail.

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Permalink Reply by Cameron Foster on February 17, 2009 at 4:52am

If you means student results from tests and assignments etc: I use google docs for that BUT with only the student ID. The parents (and particular student) know their ID number so I can open up the marking spreadsheet to my cohort + parents to view (only).

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kennedy on February 17, 2009 at 10:23am

John,

What do you mean by "special education-oriented" features? We use First Class in my district and can create mailing lists, cc or bcc anyone we wish, check the history of a message to see if it has been read, attach files, embed images, etc...I would differ with you about FC trying to compete with Outlook. Its a very different environment. I have dog in the fight, but simply wonder what FC can't do that you need it to do?

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Permalink Reply by John Faig on February 17, 2009 at 11:03am

Tom,

Thanks for the feedback. In my perfect world, I could easily select a student e-mail address and his/her advisor and paent e-mail automatically. Currently, I have to look-up the parent e-mail address (not in FC) and the advisor (a teacher in FC). I teach 180 students so setting up a small mailing list for each studetn would be cumbersome.

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Permalink Reply by Tom Kennedy on February 17, 2009 at 3:13pm

I see what you mean. I'm not sure such a tool exists with one click mail to student, adviser and parent. Sure sounds like a winner though. Good luck with that.

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Permalink Reply by Cameron Foster on February 18, 2009 at 1:19am

This is a work around/outsourcing option:
Create a google form for the students to fill in at home that asks for all the info you seek. The collated results will form a spreadsheet (I think I am right........) Then use that spreadsheet to generate 'reports' on a student that yields multiple contacts - then just delete the ones you don't want depending on the circumstance.

Laziness and always being time poor is the key motivator for my solution!
Actually, I am also 'finance poor'.