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Tech is making it harder to communicate with schools

How do you best communicate with people in this day and age? Is it through Facebook, Twitter, Slack, WhatsApp? To say we’re spoiled for choice is an understatement.

Today, Facebook launched a new Secret Messaging service to rival Snapchat; yesterday FNB introduced direct messaging into its banking app; over the last few weeks Google has launched not one but two new standalone messaging apps.

Everyone wants to be your de facto messaging platform, but the truth is that they can’t be. And speaking personally the more ways to send a message there are, the less likely I am to use any of them.

Nowhere is this more apparent in my life than when it comes to my daughter’s school. Arguably it’s the single institution I should be most in contact with, guaranteeing her future and living up to my fantasy of being the super-supportive and scholarly dad. Yet in reality, it’s the one that I find hardest to actually stay up to date with.

And frankly, I blame technology.

Back when I was at school, if my teacher or head needed to communicate with my parents it was simple. They sent home a letter or wrote something in my homework book, and my parents had to sign to say they had received it. Failure to receive that signature would result in a severe reprimand for me – not good old mum and dad.

It taught me two important lessons: successful planning and execution on anything means taking personal responsibility to keep channels of communucation clear and open between all involved stakeholders, and being able to convincingly forge a signature will always be a valuable skill.

Today things are different. If there’s something I need to know about at school it might be relayed via the website, email, a PDF (downloadable from a link within the email), any one of several diverse WhatsApp groups, the Facebook page, SMS or a piece of paper left to rot in the bottom of said daughter’s bag.

And that’s before you get to the dreaded D6 Communicator, that seeming ubiquitous piece of anti-messaging software that strikes fear into the hearts of all parent’s who’ve used it. If you haven’t sampled this aggregator of diaries, extra-murals and newsletters consider yourself lucky. I’d argue it’s the single most infuriating piece of software not to have been developed as part of iTunes.

The problem is that D6 and its ilk have become a gateway drug for education messaging apps. Once a school (or residents association, or office team, or any other grouping) adopts one form of messaging into their workflow, things spiral out of control. Recognise this thought process: “Hey, we’re using Slack now. Oh, my boss is also on Skype, maybe I’ll send her a Skype message instead as that’s open. They’re all the same, aren’t they?”

Sometimes, the same message will be passed on via all the channels that now emanate from the school. Sometimes it appears that other parents have a telepathic link to the teachers brain and just know what’s going on without

Ultimately, though, it’s a herculean task trying to stay on top of all these different methods of reminding you that football is still on Wednesdays – and unfortunately, without a single target to focus on I invariably end up losing track of all of them.

I know I’m rubbish at it. I tell myself that it’s because I am plugged into so many real-time communication tools as part of my job, that I actively avoid the same tools in my personal life or my eyes would never witness a world that isn’t backlit. But others (including my wife, who is just as slavishly connected as I am during the day) do it.

Information overload is common – just this morning Eusebius McKaiser hosted a discussion on 702 on the subject. As a technologist, I feel I should have the answers. Sadly, the best I can think of is to go back to a single piece of paper.

[Image – CC Álvaro Ibáñez]

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