Uno Goes to Class! School uses Flocknote to Improve Communications

“We use Flocknote on a daily basis. Most days we have at least ten different Flocknotes going out,” she added. “What we like [about Flocknote] is that we can have a separate group for each list like our parents, alumni, extracurricular activities, and each homeroom class. So, for example, if we have something special we want to send to our alumni, the group for only alumni is already created and we just send it to them.”

Teachers Inform Parents of Class Activities

Lynn said each homeroom teacher has their own Flocknote group for the parents of their students, and some teachers will send out a Flocknote each day. With the photo and video features, it makes it easier for a teacher to send out a quick email with a photo letting the parents know what they did that day in class.

“It’s easy. The teachers have the ability to keep in touch much more effectively” Lynn said.

Updating Contact Information Easily

As the admin for the school’s Flocknote, Lynn said the management side of keeping everyone’s current contact information is much simpler and more accurate than their previous solution. Before Flocknote, the school was using Outlook to email parents and other school members.

“If a parent changed their email before in Outlook I would have to go through all the lists they were a part of and change it in each list. If they had two or three kids in our school who were each involved in an activity, I might have to change their contact information manually on 10 different lists, which was time consuming and left room for input error” said Lynn. “Now they can just update their own profile themselves, plus it only has to be updated once and applies to all of the different groups they are in. We love the self-management.”

Sending out a Flocknote for Last-Minute Changes

Before using Flocknote, if a club sponsor or coach was out sick and had to cancel an after school activity or practice, students from that organization or sport would have to go to the front office after school and each call their parents letting them know they had to be picked up. Now another Flocknote admin can send a Flocknote out for them (or the sponsor can even do it from home!) letting the parents know that practice is canceled.

“We are able to keep our parents informed much, much quicker,” said Lynn. “Using Flocknote also greatly reduces the number of phone calls made to and from the school front office”

As a school, they need a reliable communication method to make sure parents do not miss important information.

“We love the Analytics feature in Flocknote,” said Lynn. “When parents report that they did not receive information… we can take a look at the analytics in Flocknote to see if they received and opened the email. If not, we can resolve the issue.”

Using Polls to Survey Interest

Lynn said the school really likes the ability to add Polls to the email notes they send out as well. She said the coaches will use it frequently, such as polling the parents to see who would attend if they had practice over the Christmas break.

Other times they poll the parents to see if they are interested in something, such as when they sent out a poll about a new shirt the school was thinking about selling. They were able to send a Flocknote with a photo of the new shirt and a poll asking the parents if they would be interested in buying the shirt if it was offered.