A new smartphone app is making it easier for Thorndon parents to juggle their kids’ activities.
The Thorndon School app allows parents to inform the school of absences, check upcoming events and access staff contact details.
E-Learning leader Jessie Gregory
E-Learning Leader Jessie Gregory says the app was created because the school wanted better communication between parents and staff.
“It makes it easy for parents to communicate and for us to communicate back to parents.”
“You’ve got to go with the times, it’s where a lot of people are heading at the moment,” she says.
Gregory also says that parents can subscribe to classroom specific alerts relevant to their child.
The app was developed by Napier based company School Apps, who provided Gregory with a prototype of the software, which was then shown to staff for correction and improvement.
“It was already set up really well by them…it was really painless,” says Gregory.
The app was funded through the school’s membership to the Wellington Loop, a collective of local primary and secondary schools.
The Loop provides its members with IT services that would otherwise be too costly for individual schools to pay for.
Gregory says feedback has been positive so far and parents think the app is handy.
The app has been live for around 3 weeks and has received downloads from 142 families so far, 87 from Apple users and 55 from Android users.