Parent Communication

Application: Bloomz

Knowledge:  The Bloomz app is a platform for teachers to connect, coordinate, and communicate with parents.  Teachers can send parents daily updates as well share photos and videos with them.  The app allows for teachers to communicate to an entire group of parents or to specify individual parents.  The app is also a platform for teachers to share a calendar of events and to post signups for parent/teacher conferences or volunteer opportunities.  Bloomz has a two-way messaging system within the app for real time messaging, as well as behavioral and routine reports.  This app allows parents to visit one app for information about their students classroom as opposed to searching through emails, and clicking on links, or checking Facebook.

Bloomz allows you to add all your students and link their parents contact information to each child.

With Bloomz you can  share photos, post updates, make announcements, alert parents, provide a calendar of events, request volunteers, provide signups for meetings and conferences, or send a quick message to parents.

You can send stickers to parents based on the child's efforts.

You can create stickers that are custom to your classroom rules.

Calendar and Event Schedule

Volunteer and Conference Sign-ups

Add events to classroom calendar.

Application: Parent communication is a large part of the early childhood classroom.  It is often the last time parents develop a day to day relationship with their child's teacher.  Parents are always requesting pictures and updates of their children.  The Bloomz app will be useful in the classroom for communicating with the parents throughout the classroom day.  Often communication takes place at drop off, pick up, or during parent/teacher conferences.  Bloomz app will allow me to message and document notes to the parents as things occur during the day.  Often things are forgotten by the end of the day and are often not communicated to the parents.  Currently, in my classroom information is posted in many different places. The integration of the Bloomz app will eliminate the need for checking for information in different places, the parents can simply receive all updates and information in one place.  Currently, parents have to scroll through dozens of pictures of other children to find one picture of their own child.  The Bloomz app allows me to send pictures, videos or notes individually to each child's parent.  Parents will be able to sign up for parent/teacher conferences directly on this app, rather than navigate a link through an email, that is often lost in the shuffle of all the other emails they are receiving.  The reports will allows parents to review and be updated on their children's toilet efforts, eating habits, and behavior patterns.  The Bloomz calendar will keep parents up to date on family events, schools closings, school happenings and any other calendar related entries.

Reflection:  The best part about this app is its ability to do so many things in one place!  Parents ability to see all school related communications in one place is a time saver and a more effective way for teachers to communicate on a daily basis.  Parents are constantly missing or losing emails because they went into junk folders, or are accidentally deleted.  With Bloomz, all communications are easily located in one place.  Bloomz will eliminate the end of the day "Ugh, I forgot to tell John's mom he had an accident today".  With the ability to complete reports on the classroom iPad and send them to parents as things occur, parents will receive in the moment messages with updates as they occur.  I can see a downside to this, as parents are already worried about their child's behavior, it might be better to have problematic occurrences discussed in person.  Providing parents with constant updates might open up a door for overly communicative parents to be messaging constantly throughout the day, and expecting immediate responses.  Teachers already have a lot to do, and we are not available to discuss constantly throughout the day, because we are busy teaching your children!  You might need to choose which things are most effective communicated through the app and which things are more appropriate to discuss in person.