by Richard Byrne Last week I met with representatives of dozens of companies pitching their products at the ISTE conference. In the course of the year I’ll hear dozens of more pitches and receive hundreds, if not thousands, of press releases from edtech companies. Of all of those companies, the ones that fail to hold my attention make the same mistake. Whether they realize it or not, they talk down to teachers. There are a few ways I hear edtech companies talk down to teachers without realizing it.

A few weeks ago my friend Vicki Davis raved to me about how much she liked using Bloomz to communicate with parents. Last week I finally had the time to explore everything Bloomz has to offer and I was able to see why Vicki spoke so highly of it. At its core Bloomz is a messaging service for teachers and it does that well. Dive deeper into what Bloomz offers and you’ll see that it is more than just a messaging tool. In Bloomz you can create classes, contact lists, and discussion groups. Perhaps my favorite feature of Bloomz is the appointment scheduling tool. In Bloomz you can create classes to organize your communication to parents and students. You can create as many classes as you need. If you teach multiple sections of a course, you could create a separate class in Bloomz for each section. Once you’ve created a class …

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