Tips and tricks for using Announcements from SchoolSpeak Support

Too Many Announcements!

 

Do you have a lot of announcements on your home page or in your classroom groups? Or do your parents have to scroll A LOT to get to their student's homework? Are parents saying it is too hard to find information? Let's use the power of announcements to our advantage!

1. Keep your announcements current! Make sure that you have setup the announcement to expire in a timely fashion. Most announcements need to be front and center for a short period of time. When announcements are visible for a long time, parents stop paying attention! Use the From: and To: fields to indicate how long the announcement should be on the home page. Remember that once the time expires, the announcement is still in SchoolSpeak for parents to view.

 

 

2. Do NOT delete! In support, we get a lot of chats about what happens if a school delete's announcements. Sometimes they can be recovered but not always but it may take a while. We suggest that you use the From:/To: fields to make the parent experience better.

 

3. Take advantage displaying the announcement headlines only by removing the announcement summary, modified by and modified date!

Let's face it, when parents log into SchoolSpeak they want to find the information quickly. When they see long explanations or summaries they may not even read the announcement. SchoolSpeak support can change the way that announcements are displayed on your homepage. Here is an example:

 

 

                  Too much information?                                                                                                  Just Right for Parents to get Information

.

 

In the new way of displaying information, parents are able to see the important highlights and then click on the announcement to learn more. Please contact SchoolSpeak support to help make the change.

 

4. Put long term items into a webpage resource!

There are always items that we need to keep accessible for parents for the entire year - maybe it is a link to the parish site, a link to a parent handbook or some forms from the state. Some schools will make an announcement in September that expires in June. There are a couple of issues with this plan:

   1. Parents stop paying attention after a while

   2. It is taking up valuable space on your homepage when you may have other information you would like to share.

 

A great way to work with these kinds of items it to create a webpage resource and provide the information within that new resource. You van draw a parent's attention to it by linking an announcement that displays for a while. The webpage will be available the whole year and will not take up the valuable home page space.