Honestly as a technically challenged parent this app scared me. After exploring the easy to use app, and using the readily useful communication tools my comfort level eased quite a bit. The videos seemed slow and do get stuck making viewing a lesson difficult, but none the less I’m still impressed. Actually I was struggling a bit with my son on the subject of learning in school. Despite the COVID-19 crisis I feel like I’m developing a much closer relationship with my son as far as discussing what he’s actually learned and where he needs help. I also feel much closer to his teacher giving me the satisfaction of actively being apart of the education being presented to my child. This has been a very positive experience for not just my son, but the entire family! My two year old can now participate in educational activities with his brother instead of racing out to the curb every morning to wait for the big yellow Twinkie that he doesn’t get to ride.

Mac specific: the messaging app will delete what you are typing when you hit the space bar it takes too long to message a specific child’s parent. On my end, it doesn’t make sense for me to click “message” —> “private message”then the next screen just be a comprehensive list of all the students contacts listed alphabetically. Even you have as little as 10 kids in a class, that is a list of 20 - 40 people. It’s also a problem because it assumes you know a child first and last name starting the first day of school, since the students are organized by last name. It also takes too long because you can’t search a name within in a class or grade. So if I need to contact “John’s” parents, I have to type “John” into the search bar and all the “Johns” in the whole school pop up. This isn’t much of an issue if I’m a lower elementary teacher with one class. But if I’m upper elementary + and teaching multiple classes (even across multiple grade) this search bar is not good. Then once you find the parent you’re looking for, it takes to long to send the message from just navigating the app. Often times we do not have more than 3 minutes to find a student’s contacts then craft a message (and those three minutes will be interrupted) so everything needs to be faster / less clicks / less scanning and reading. More filters for the search bar. And let me type freely with out deleting the message. Overall, needs to be more efficient. Think of teaching as a sport. Everything is in constant motion so tech needs to be as efficient as possible.

If I was in 1 building and not a parent and a teacher I might like it. However. I work in 4 buildings and cannot combine my groups so I must send messages to students in each of my 3 elementary buildings separately . The posts come separately from each building and you must log into that building in order to see the messages and posts. There is no central location. I have a daughter in the 4th building I work in. So I get the posts -too many- from her building admin, teachers, and my students and parents. My other daughter attends the 5th building in our district. So your see there is a Constant stream of texts coming to parent square. I receive emails telling me I have a parent square and texts telling me to check parent square. Too much to keep track of.I have asked my students’Parents about it. Their students have been reminded but still miss remote classes so I asked. The parents of children in separate buildings tell me they don’t pay attention to it. They get too many texts and cannot access them easily. So, I give it a 3 because it is useful, but not very friendly for teachers in multiple buildings or for parents with more than 1 or 2 children

I feel as if the platform is unnecessarily complex at least the way my district manages it. I use it as a parent, a teacher in one district and as a coach is different district. As a parent I HATE it. The district my son is in waaaaaaaaay overuses it and this tends to shut me down in terms of paying attention to it. The vast majority of what is communicated is just not necessary and very repetitive and in my estimation is not worth the cost. As a high school teacher, I think it’s ok. I don’t send a lot. At times it is useful as a reminder for little things but on the whole it is used to announce things over and over again and as such I think it becomes annoying and people shut it out. As a coach I hate the inflexibility. Home school kids and open enrollment kids make it so that I have to send all messages to all the parents which irritates some of them for reasons above and makes me send less information than I would to the team about changes in practice plans, times, parking restrictions, etc. The athletes don’t like it either and they are hesitant to use it even though they are forced to use it. Overall it reminds me of the cone of silence on Get Smart. It’s overly complicated and I think makes communication worse and not better.