Blogs

January 22, 2013

School Directory App invaluable tool for parents

Why do parents need a mobile school directory? All parents are always balancing their commitments to work and other responsibilities with their children’s activities and school events. Their school directory and calendar is an invaluable tool for them to communicate with other parents in their child’s class/school/sports team. Parents are mobile and on the run dropping and picking up kids at various activities. However most of the schools do not publish a mobile school directory. The school directories continue to be printed on paper. Take the case of Allison, a working Mom with 2 children in elementary school who lives in our neighborhood. She relies heavily on her babysitter to pick up the children from the school at 3 and take care of them until she comes home in the evening. When Allison’s babysitter’s car breaks down, she has to find someone to pick up her kids and keep them […]
December 20, 2012

Mobile and Online School Directory for School Parents – Top Ten Reasons

Do we use the printed copies of the Yellow Pages? Years ago, after search engines like Yahoo, Google and Bing put businesses on the internet highway, the paper Yellow pages have grown extinct. We no longer refer to the paper directory as much as our mobile apps or the online white and yellow pages. Our schools however continue to churn out a paper directory year after year after year. A Mobile and Online Directory is not common yet.  Schools are generally cautious in their approach to technology and rightfully so. However, we offer several compelling reasons to adopt a mobile school directory below. The school directory contains the contact information of all the parents, teachers and staff in the school, the school calendar and the school rules/regulations. Here are Top Ten simple reasons to move all of the directory information to a mobile and online directory. 10. Updated Real time […]
December 4, 2012

Mobile and Online School Directory App Helps Parents in a time crunch

Why did we build this mobile and online school directory app? Parent Teacher Organizations build a school directory for the parents in their school using simple tools – Microsoft Excel and Word mostly. Some of them use a directory software tool which needs knowledge of some programming/building macros and still requires several hundreds of hours of work massaging the data. At the end of this time consuming exercise, the print directory is out of date almost immediately, as some new families have joined the school, some of the parents have changed their phone numbers or address. Mobile and Online School Directory Apps can solve all of these issues. My PTA goes through the same process each year. They collect addresses/phone numbers/get permission slips from parents, all of which can be automated on the web. I developed a mobile school directory app, MobileArq, to solve this issue for PTAs/PTOs/HSAs. To solve […]
August 2, 2012

Collaboration Portals for Parents in K-12 schools

Parent Teacher Organizations or Parent Teacher Associations are an important part of the public school fabric in the United States. They act as a conduit between the parents and the Board of Education in each district as well as the channel of communication between parents and the Principal/Staff running a school. Research has shown that parent involvement and support for children has been critical to their success. The earlier the parent gets involved in their children’s education and growth, the more significant are the results.  Parent involvement has resulted in higher grades, test scores and graduation rates. In spite of the evidence, lack of parent involvement is a well known and huge problem in public schools. Parents are busy with the day-to-day grind of their lives and take a back seat when it comes to their child’s education. Easy access to information and ability to talk to other parents in […]