App-palooza

As I was looking at the various links that were associated with this activity I focused on trying to find something that would help me communicate with parents better.  Last year I learned that Instagram would be a great tool to use to keep parents up to date on what is going on in the classroom.  I LOVE IT!  I have been able to share videos, pictures and go live on field trips that we have been on.  The parents that are connected love it!  The downside of using Instagram it doesn’t help with other types of communication, like upcoming projects, conferences, updates that are occurring.  So I set off to explore something that might help with that.  I looked at remind….now this is something that I have used in the past and is great when sending a quick note about an upcoming event or a reminder.  However, the downside is that parents cannot respond or communicate back.  With a little more digging I found a website called Bloomz.  This is not on the cool tools site so I am hoping this is ok to write about.   Bloomz is pretty much Facebook for school. It is shown through a timeline.  Parents can be invited, conferences can be made, and behavior can be tracked.  I could even upload extra permission slips or homework that students tend to lose!!!  I played around with it and did the demo class.  I will most definitely be setting this up for my next year’s class.  It is the entire package!!!