Hi, my name is Jasmine Floyd and I'm one of the educational technology liaisons. In this video, we'll look at how to use parents where as a new user. Go ahead and type in this bit lead into your chrome browser and then you'll have access to this slide. Go ahead and type in this video and then you'll have access to this slide. If you have any questions or needs support, feel free to reach out to the edtechliaisons@knockskools.org and we'd be happy to answer your questions. May come soon, questions or offer any support you may need.

In this video, we'll look at how to communicate with ParentSquare, specifically using posts and add-ons and messaging with your students families. So why are we using ParentSquare? ParentSquare is a district adoption communication tool that allows us to communicate with students families via posts, messages and alerts. Additionally, if you are a high school teacher, your students can use students square so that you can communicate with them as well. 

We'll get started by looking at an overview and some of the account settings within your ParentSquare account. So go ahead and open a new tab in your browser and then go to ParentSquare.com. And you'll want to make sure you click on the icon that says sign in with Google and use your KCS credentials to sign in. Upon your first login, it'll ask you to confirm your contact information and your email address. You want to make sure this information is correct. As it will be the number that is used to contact you when the district issues any alerts such as school closures. 

Once you're signed in, you'll see a navigation menu that looks very similar to the one that I have here. If you're familiar, with using different social media platforms, ParentSquare is very much like those platforms, so it'll help you get started right away. In the center, you'll find a center feed that is like a scrolling news feed that will have posts that not only you create, but that perhaps your administrator creates district administrators, or if you are a parent of a child in another KCS school, you will also see those posts from their teacher as well. On the left hand side is our navigation bar, and that's where you'll, do a lot of the content creation for ParentSquare, where you can create posts and messages. On the right hand side, you'll see information called the side bar. This is where you'll see any events that you're attached to, or any files or photos that you've sh- shared as well. On the left hand side bar, when you look at the communication tab, you'll be able to see the three different ways that we can communicate on ParentSquare. 

Posts allow you to send class-wide public information. This is helpful for things such as upcoming field trips, maybe spirit days, things that you want your students' families to know about. 

Messages work more like a private texting conversation where you can have one-on-one conversations. You can also have group messages and tag in other teachers, administrators, or tag more than one set of families in a group conversation as well. 

And then lastly is alerts and notices. This will allow you to, have timely information sent that is time sensitive. This does bypass the user's notifications, so alerts are used for information that needs to go out quickly and rapidly. When the district sends out alerts, such as school closures for a snow day, for example, you'll receive them through parents, whereas an alert.

 The next tab is the Explore tab. In the Explore tab, you'll find the directory. This will have your student's families contact information. That is synced over from Aspen. So there's no need for you to type in information or add students as students enroll throughout the school year. When those additions are made in your Aspen roster, they will populate in ParentSquare over an inch. The same thing if a student leaves halfway through the school year, the changes will happen automatically in ParentSquare. 

You'll also see links there for calendars, photos, and then if you want to add any additional links that may be helpful for your students families. You can add those there as well. The Participate tab will allow you to look at any groups that you're a member of or groups that you are an owner of. This is helpful for athletic coaches, after school club sponsors, or if you want to create a- a group for like a grade level, for example, you can create groups that students can be added to and then communicate with them, just like you would if they were added through Aspen through a class. 

Take a second to go ahead. And click on your account, the top right corner of ParentSquare, you'll click on your name and then click on my account. Here you can look at your contact information. You can also look at notification settings and office hours. ParentSquare does have to. A lot of people have to go to their ParentSquare. It's a very important thing to do with parents You can choose to have a parent's account and change language settings here. No need for you to do that as the teacher. If you go into notification settings, you can change how you want ParentSquare to notify you of any posts that are made. You can choose to be instantly notified or you can choose to have digest settings turned on. Digest allows you to get an email at the end of the day with all of the events posts all in one email in one place. By setting office hours, it allows you to communicate with your students' families when you're available to answer messages and post, so that they can best communicate with you. So go ahead and take a second to customize your notification settings and perhaps turn on office hours and set those. 

We're going to look at the first way to communicate with families class-wide, which is posts. Within posts, you have the ability to send posts to the different classes that you teach or multiple classes at one time. Some things to consider is that you do have the ability to edit the text so you can change font. You can also change the color of wording. And then you can add photos. We just want to make sure that we're mindful of having student- media releases on file when we are sharing pictures of students. And then you can also add some event add-ons, forms, and even asking for donations to a post. We'll look at some examples of that. But there's also- a link here for how to create posts and different resources that you may find helpful when you create posts for your students. Families. 

And then something to be mindful of is that parents can comment on a post if you enable that. So after you post, you can click on the gear icon and then enable posts or disable posts based upon your preferences. Those comments are private. So if a family decides to send you a comment, only you as the teacher or any other teacher. 

So here's some examples of different posts that you might find helpful, especially at the beginning of this school year. Perhaps your school is, This is a very important one for me to call an event add-on to this post so that when parents actually click on my post, this event right here can be added directly to their calendar just by clicking it on their phones. This one has an RSVP so when parents reply if they're able to attend and how many- are able to attend, I can see a report of that once they've submitted that information. I've also included a file upload here of the school supply list. If parents have that at a glance, no need to find that paper that came home before school ended with the supply list. And then this one even has a form add on where I want to know how parents are going to be picking up their kids after school. So are they going to be walking home? Are they going to be a bus ride? Are parents would to see this form? They'd select their child's name. It would pre- populate their child's name and then they'd select how their child's getting home and they can digitally sign it. And then once that information goes in, I can actually go to the gear icon here and I can click on my forms and view the report there. I can see my RSVPs there as well. So, lots of different features all within one post.

 Perhaps you're a teacher who creates a wish list at the beginning of the year. You can do that with your ParentSquare by using what's called an add-on called ask for items. And to do this, you just list the different items. The items that you need for your classroom, the amount that's needed, and then families can sign up. And it will remind them that they have signed up for an item by getting an email notification to remind them when they need to turn that item into your classroom. And then you as a teacher can, and also send reminders as well.

 And then the last thing that you can do through posts is create conference signups. So maybe your school is going to have a conference night and you want to set up some times for families to come in and schedule time with you. You can also do that as well. So to create those posts, when you are in posts, you will click on posts and then create new posts. And you'll see a blank template very similar to mine. Here in the two box, when you click that, it'll allow you to, you to select your classes that are as aspen rostered. You'll create a subject line, type in your information here. And then on the left hand side, here are those event, those add-ons that I mentioned before. So that event add-on, you can attach photos. Those files, any forms or permissions could be put there as well. And then that donation wish list there. You can also request volunteers if you needed an event where you need some parent volunteers. They still need to have the proper forms on file at your school. But you can set up some times there for those of them to volunteer. 

You'll also be able to see over here on the right hand side how your families are going to get your communication. So for this post right here four of my families are getting it instantly to are getting it digest. If I ever needed to send out this information right away before they get that evening email, I can send that instantly and override a user's digest settings. We just want to use that sparingly and mindfully so that we are still mindful of users notification settings. There are things that you can do there with posts. 

The last thing is you can also create newsletter templates for your posts. When I create a new post, I can actually click on this little icon. And then there's another icon that has some shapes inside of it and it allows me to use different templates there. So some resources that could be helpful for you that you that for those of you that may use. 

So I'm just going to think about what are some things you could use ParentSquare posts for this school year. Some things to keep in mind as you create posts or just thinking about the tone that's conveyed using words such as we versus you keeping it positive. Keep your message simple. If it's lengthy, it's it may not be read completely. So making sure that we're clear and concise. We think about the font, the spacing, our centered structure. And then having some kind of call to action. This could be in your subject line where you have a clear, detailed, what do you need parents to do? Is it ask their students a question after reading the post? Is it donate something to your classroom? What is it that you need them to do? And then of course, just proofread your- post before you send it out. 

So definitely try this out and you can save this as a draft if you're not ready to send it now, but create a post to welcome your families and to let them know who you are as their child- teacher this school year. There's also some example posts here for all different grade levels. So definitely check out that link there to give you some ideas of how you could create and craft. You are welcome post. 

Alright, so the second way that we- you can see communicate on ParentSquare is through messaging. Messaging is that texting conversation that you can have with just one family or multiple families at a time. You can see here this is the at version of ParentSquare. It looks very much. Like a texting conversation. It does happen in real time. So when you send a message, it goes out in real time to however the user has their setting set up. And you can select multiple recipients either as a private mess. Or a group message. If you select private, each person is going to get a separate thread. If you select a group message, everyone can see each other's comments and comment to each other as well. You can also add teachers or administrators to your message. So if this was a post, if this was a message where you wanted maybe another teacher that also works with that student to be involved in, you can add that teacher to the message as well. And it also has that real way that real time two-way transition. And that is our participation group of support and successful solutions.

 Alright. So as you saw in the future, your student should download the app called StudentSquare. StudentSquare works the same way as ParentSquare. It allows high schoolers to communicate with your teachers and vice versa. When you as a teacher create a post, you still use a ParentSquare. But when you go to create that post as a high school teacher, you can also click students and share that information with them as well. Students will use their case. Yes, credentials to log into StudentSquare. They can do this via their Chromebooks or they can download. So let's think about some ways that parents where can replace some former ways that you use to communicate with families. I know there's different lots of different apps that I've been using. The person who used to do this is a helpful tool for just streamlining our communication with families. 

Okay, the next thing we'll talk about is groups. If you are an athletic coach or you lead an after school activity or club, for example, by creating a group, you can actually add students that you might not teach during the day in a core content area, but they're in your after school. So, if you're a football coach, you can message a high school football team about maybe pre- practice getting canceled or a time getting changed, or if it's a K-A, you could message about different times or events that are going on to families that are involved with that group. So definitely some helpful tools by using groups. If you're an athletic coach, those groups are created through Aspen and the extracurriculars tab, and once those students are rostered in through Aspen, those groups will populate on your end in ParentSquare. You can also manage groups and add own speakers to groups, so if there's more than one coach or more than one sponsor to a club, you can add those people. There's some videos here on how to do that. 

Lastly, we can look at data that ParentSquare provides us on how viewers are using and engaging with our posts. After you've created a post at the bottom of the post, you'll see an icon that looks like an eyeball and then a number next to it. When you click on that number, it'll let you know how many users were notified, but then additionally it'll let you know the user's name, what language they're viewing your posts in, and then it'll let you know if they've actually clicked on your posts and interacted with it, or it's just still sitting on red in their inbox. If you see a message light and a parent's name light up in red, that means that their contact information is incorrect. So changes need to be made in Aspen for that contact information to be correct in ParentSquare. 

Alright, if you do need any, Help with in ParentSquare at the top right corner of your ParentSquare dash. Where do you'll see a question mark icon? And when you click on that, it'll take you to this help menu here where you can just type in anything like how do I create a post and videos and, tutorials set by step will show up on how to do that. There's also tutorials here for parents and students so that you could share links with those families as well. Definitely encourage your families to download the, So at the beginning of the school year is a great time to have these posted up around your school building encourage families to download the app as that's gonna be the easiest way for them to communicate with you. And then you, You as a teacher if you have not downloaded the app grab your mobile device right now so that you can have it at your fingertips as well. 

So we've talked about how to use parents where with posts and add-ons and then also how to use messaging. But definitely if you have further questions or you want to dig a little deeper because there's a lot more than ParentSquared can do to allow you to engage your families. Do not hesitate to reach out to our team. We'd be happy to support you and we could even schedule some time to come out to your school and work with your grade level or work with you on how to best use parents where with your students.