Do not know anything about this corporation, but the article is
interesting. If anyone has tried this, please advise. Thanks so much.
FYI
Wonder if the County Administration will invest in this? Would this be
helpful for our school? Thanks so much.
http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=3D5042
GroupCast enables schools to prelist home, work, cell phone, and pager
numbers for each child's guardian in the event of an unplanned dismissal
or school emergency.=20
Administrators then dial a toll-free number from any phone, record a
message, and have that message delivered to each parent phone number
listed within a matter of minutes.=20
The system costs just pennies a phone call and can be used for a variety
of school communication purposes--from venue changes for school
performances, to registration deadlines or sports team cancellations, to
yearbook payment reminders and report card notices.=20
Although a variety of service plans are available, schools generally are
charged on prepaid basis, with the base plan including up to 3,000
30-second calls, making the service affordable for most school budgets.
Because the service is web-based, no equipment or software purchases are
required, making it almost universally available.=20
"An emergency thankfully does not happen every day," says Paul
Langhorst, GroupCast vice president. "Calling one or two homes is easy,
but when a large group of parents need to be contacted, schools usually
do not have the staff or phone lines available to get the word out."=20
Langhorst, a telecommunications management professional, came up with
the phone messaging service concept for schools after he and his wife
both missed a critical dismissal message and his daughter was the last
one picked up at school.=20
Kathryn Swearingen
Media Technology Specialist
Roswell High School
Swearingen@fultonschools.org
-----Original Message-----
From: School Library Media & Network Communications
[mailto:LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of NHS Webmaster
Sent: Friday, May 28, 2004 8:45 AM
To: LM_NET@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: TARGET->Creating a listserv or other options for communicating
with parents
My assistant principal wants to expand ways of communicating with
parents. We were discussing options that would allow us to automatically
send notices such as parent newsletters, activity calendars, report card
distribution notices, etc. We know that at the high school level
anything we send via paper via student rarely arrives home. Mailing
everything is very expensive.
We want some way for parents to "opt in" to this rather than getting
there e-mail addresses and creating groups. That is too time-consuming
and subject to change as e-mail addresses change.
One option we discussed was setting up a listserv. Have you done this?
Does it work. How did you do it?
Thanks in advance.
Adam
Adam Janowski
Library Media Specialist
Naples High School
1100 Golden Eagle Circle
Naples, FL 34102
E-mail: NHSWebmaster@collier.k12.fl.us
Phone: 239-430-6644 Ext. 390
Fax: 239-430-6673
Library web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/lmc/
School web site: http://collier.k12.fl.us/nhs/
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