We all remember the time when we walked into our schools with our parents during our PTM and we were welcomed by an entrance filled with pinboards displaying all the artwork and creativity of students along with the news updates pinned up for the parents to see. It made us all beam with immense pride. We must also remember that most parents were so busy meeting teachers and collecting results that these bulletin boards often got ignored. Yet, it is a fond memory that lingers for most of us, making us feel a sense of accomplishment even after so many years have passed since we have all left our schools.
Imagine the pride our own students must feel when they see their creativity, their achievements, and their participation in the various school initiatives displayed prominently for their parents to see and appreciate. How convenient it would be for schools to display relevant information, announcement, and news in a place where parents can access them easily and conveniently? And what if we were also able to make sure that, unlike the physical bulletin boards, the parents are unable to ignore or miss all this information?
Also Read: Why It Is Important For Schools To Keep Parents Aligned With Their Children’s Planes of Development
Schoolpad’s Inspiration
The idea to talk about these digital bulletin boards or informational pages came to us from our partner schools themselves. During our many interactions with our partner schools, some of them showcased the usage of one of the useful features on SchoolPad which allows schools to create separate informational pages on different topics, one page for one topic, and schools can share these pages with parents, students, and teachers. These pages also allowed the schools to keep pushing regular updates under each of the pages.
More than the usage of our informational pages, it was the kind of content that schools were sharing on these pages that had us jumping out of our seats with excitement. It inspired us to consolidate our learning from this innovative usage of our custom pages feature and share it as an idea with school owners and educators across the industry. There are several ways that are being used to share these updates across different areas of the school, but we believe that sharing them through dedicated pages in a digital way with instant notifications informing parents about these updates on a regular basis is one of the best ways to do this.
The Digital Way
Our partner schools demonstrated to us how they were using these informational pages as bulletin boards and content-sharing platforms. One of them had a page called Artist of the Week. The school had an Art club and every week they used to put a photo of the best artwork, on this page, along with the child’s photo, name, and class. As soon as this was uploaded, a notification was sent to the teachers and parents of the entire school so that they could view the update instantly on their phones. Similarly, another page called Click of the Week was used to showcase some of the beautiful photographs clicked by students of the Photography club. The schools showed us a dozen of such pages to highlight the contributions and achievements of students, teaching methodologies, and even tips for parents. As we went through these pages, we were amazed by the concept and the overall impact this simple idea could create to showcase schools’ efforts and initiatives and encourage students and parents to get more involved in different activities and initiatives being taken up by the school.
Also Read: The Good Data Practice Every Future Ready School Must Know About To Save Time And Trouble
We have already highlighted the importance of schools sharing their initiatives with parents regularly and these informational pages are a great digital solution to do the same with ease, efficiency, and accessibility. Because of its underlying nature, this is a solution that fits in today’s era. The notifications make sure they get the attention of the end consumer and ensure that the information gets passed on to the right set of consumers which are parents and teachers in this case and gets consumed unlike with the physical bulletin boards where it was easy to have been missed or ignored.
For us at Schoolpad, we believe that this is a superpower for schools through which they can highlight and bring every contribution made by their students and teachers to the notice of the parents and allow them to view them, feel proud and show them to their friends and relatives. This in turn, makes sure our students feel the same pride we felt back in the day during our PTMs, and cherish them as fond memories.
Want to learn more about how you can use Schoolpad’s communication platform to keep your parents up to date will all important activities and announcements of the school? Please feel free to get in touch with us at connect@schoolpad.in . You can also click on the request a demo link and one of our coaches will get in touch with you.
