SchoolSpeak Speaks volumes
Rating: 10 out of 10
March 19, 2019
CP
Vetted Review
Verified User
2 years of experience
SchoolSpeak is an app that some of the teachers use across their classes to work with students and parents while controlling curriculum and lessons. It serves as a one-stop solution for most teachers and parents and administrators. The SchoolSpeak platform serves as a school, department or class website and application that users are given access to. It is used by individual teachers and not mandated by the school or any administrators or fellow teachers as a requirement to utilize. However, it is encouraged to use platforms that will improve the quality of education, and some of those recommendations involve SchoolSpeak. The problem it solves is the need to be in constant communication with students and parents. Creating a school community is of utmost importance of educators, and the only way to do that is through proper communication, a variety of tools for communication, and a content control system to handle student and lesson content.
- One thing it does well is one of the tools it incorporation, volunteer forms. These forms work for parents, teachers, and students. One of the hardest things to do is to get confirmation sign-ups and support. This streamlines the process of organizing events.
- The gradebook interface is easy to use and understand. In order to take attendance, complete grades and give assignments, SchoolSpeak actually is an easy platform to learn and is smoothly integrated.
- Archiving of past classes is easy to do and important because schools need to retain records for a long time after students have moved on.
- The platform lets you organize students and find them quickly by graduation.
- Positively speaking, it has a positive ROI. Although expensive, the platform does solve issues that we as educators have in giving parents daily information about their child in school. It is difficult to email all parents or call all parents, but a one-click platform really saves time and is worth the investment.
- Negatively, there is a cost associated, and therefore, sometimes teachers can be given more work instead of buying a platform like this. Using other free tools could be more time consuming but cheaper.
- Using School Speak we have seen parent involvement increase.
Moodle Rooms is a free platform but involves the need to be computer savvy. It is easy to use as well as SchoolSpeak. However, SchoolSpeak does have a direct communication platform with parents something that Moodle does not currently offer. This itself is a huge competitive advantage. The comparison then becomes, would you like to do less work but purchase SchoolSpeak, or do more work using multiple platforms but they are free. The SchoolSpeak platform does offer much more for the investment. Longer term and with full school integration, the investment is worth it. If you were to mandate using a platform, it should be SchoolSpeak because there are fewer risks associated with having to coach and education teachers, and less risk of complaints.