Why We Partnered with Schoology

An integrated effort to give all parents the opportunity to engage in their child’s education by Jennifer Larson

There’s plenty of evidence, however, that parents and educators have the same objectives. Parents want to be involved in their children’s education and schools want them to be involved. But, without the right communication practices in place, you don’t feel like you’re on the same page. When schools send out information through a number of different, fragmented channels, it becomes challenging, if not impossible, for parents to find the right information at the right time and take action. As a result, educators see a lack of response from parents and believe that parents either aren’t interested in the information or don’t want to get involved.

Fortunately, the issue is communication, not interest―and communication can be fixed. Until now, there hasn’t been an effective solution to these concerns, which is why we’ve focused on providing a whole-school solution that aggregates all parent information in one place. We aim to help schools reduce the number of tools an educator uses to communicate. For teachers, for example, this can mean turning their LMS into a communications tool by taking advantage of SchoolBzz integration, instead of using email, a website, or an additional app to push out the same information.

Our partnership with Schoology is an important step toward closing the gap between schools and families and truly giving all parents the opportunity to engage. There are a number of reasons we’ve become a Schoology Certified Partner to improve school communications and tap into the impact this improvement can have on learning, but here are three of the big ones:

1. Support student achievement―There is an abundance of evidence demonstrating that higher levels of parent involvement are positively correlated with student achievement; and the best way to increase involvement is for the school to communicate effectively with all parents. By partnering with the nation’s leading LMS, we can extend the opportunity to more school leaders to create a streamlined communication solution that gives more parents access to school information, and therefore provides more students with an equitable opportunity to receive their parents’ support in all aspects of their education.

2. Make communications more practical for schools and educators―Managing multiple apps and tools is complicated for parents, but it can be equally challenging for your teachers. If teachers don’t know whether parents prefer information on social media, via email, or by visiting a website, they have to keep each channel up to date. The Schoology-SchoolBzz integrated solution changes that necessity by ensuring all communications can be sent through one tool. And, with the platforms being fully integrated, the teacher doesn’t even have to learn SchoolBzz―all updates sent through Schoology are automatically sent to parents through the SchoolBzz app, with no additional steps required by the teacher.

3. Make access to information more equitable for families―By combining the platform managing students’ academic progress with the overall school communication platform, your school will make classroom updates much easier for parents to access. Through the SchoolBzz app, parents have a personalized experience, in which they can subscribe to their chosen channels, ensuring they get the information they want, when they want it, and know what actions to take to engage. Updates parents can receive include a list of all upcoming and past due homework and projects for the course sections relevant to their child. Further, because parents can personalize their updates, they can receive the information they need without being overwhelmed by other irrelevant updates. More benefits were introduced through a new integration with Amazon Translate, which enables parents to choose a preferred primary language for updates and assignments pushed to the SchoolBzz app, expanding the opportunity for all families to engage with their child’s education.

Our mission at SchoolBzz is to facilitate effective school-to-parent communication so that every parent has the timely, relevant information necessary to engage with and support their child’s education. It’s a relatively simple goal, but not one that’s easy to achieve. Becoming a Schoology Certified Partner is an exciting way to collaborate with schools nationwide to take strides toward this goal, extending to hundreds of thousands of parents the opportunity to engage with their child’s education, and to support schools in creating a thriving culture of communication among parents, teachers, and administrators.
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Further Reading

1. edCircuit –SchoolBzz Named Best School Communication Tool by 2019 Tech Edvocate Awards
2. EdSurge – Twelve Years Later: How the K-12 Industry and Investment Landscape Has Shifted
3. edCircuit – SchoolBzz Partners with Schoology to Provide Integrated Parent Communication Solution