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Talking Points

 


After reading so much about social media this week, and embracing the power to use it for good, I went looking for a tool that could connect people. I found this great messaging tool, Talking Points. Many school districts have a parenting messaging platform, but some do not, and in districts with diverse families and languages, this tool is such a value add for communicating with students and families. 

Common Sense Media rates this application as a 5 out of 5 stars, and AASL promoted it as a top web tool in 2020. It includes simple messaging as well as polling and information gathering in order to serve students and families best as an educator. 

There are several translating services available (google translate has come so far in the past few years), but this tool provides onboarding learning and tech support, templates, and roster integration, with privacy features. You simply type your message in your native language, and the receiver sees the message in their native language. It can be used via the web or a phone app, and can even support photo or video messaging with closed captioning options. 

Drawbacks are that parents must have a functioning email address in order to be rostered and teachers must roster families with their native language at time of set up. 

I think this is a great tool for quick connections between school and home, and supports diverse teaching experiences in all areas. 

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