I’ve been researching ways to let Ascendly coaches more easily communicate with parents. Although Ascendly tries to send out email before each lesson to go over the day’s plans, I’d love to make it even easier for coaches and parents to communicate. This page is a list of resources I’ve found and mainly a place for me to track what is out there, and to maybe help somebody else.

Remind101 is a free way for teachers to safely and cheaply (it’s free) send text messages to parents. At the time of this writing, they announced they were in 30K schools – which is just crazy.
- Pros:
  - Everyone’s phone numbers stay private, so kids won’t call you at home
  - People can choose to get emails instead of texts
  - A complete log of message
  - Free
- Cons
  - No way for central office to monitor or review messages (can this be right?).
  - Just one way communications – students/parents can’t respond
Celly is like Remind101, but students can respond
- Pros
  - Back and forth communication
  - Text, email, and web
- Cons
  - Might be deadpooled / not maintained
Set up a class Facebook page
If you Tweet, consider mirroring your tweets onto your Facebook page.
MommaZoo

Smartphone-only based solutions:

Dash is an iPhone app to track basic student performance and, most importantly, remind you to call parents:
Class Messenger

Update:

Edshelf has the definitive collection of Group Communication EdTech tools. Go there!