How to Evaluate Tech Tools and Reach the Right People
Apps are great. No one can deny the excitement of having an app: your app, with your school’s name on it. As you’re swiping through your phone, you brush past all the big-name apps and there it is — your school logo, front and center! It’s a thrill.
Less thrilling, though, is being the person in charge of it. That likely means you’re also responsible for all your school’s communication channels. It’s a big job determining that email is for this, website is for that, app is for those other things, and so on. It can be dizzying for the school comms team and families alike to make sense of the channels that schools have at their fingertips.
But don’t worry. We’re going to make sense of it all in this post. There is a perfect use case for every tool in your toolbox and every channel you have access to. Let’s dive in.
Define your goals and priorities first
As the number of tech tools increase at the average school, it’s important for us to define how they factor into our goals and priorities before implementation. Use the tool/solution evaluation survey below as a starting place.
Tool/solution evaluation survey
- Tool/solution:
- Audience:
- Short-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- Long-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- How will this tool help us meet our goal?
- Team member/team that owns implementation:
- Team member/team that owns tool usage:
- Team member/team that owns tool support:
Let’s use a real-life example to play this out. One of the scenarios we hear a lot from FACTS schools is that they struggle to define the value proposition of a school app in relation to their school website. Which do they use…and when?
The evaluation survey in action
In this example, we’ll use a pretend school called FACTS Excellence Academy. They have a nice website – recently redesigned, about six months old. They’re considering adding an app to their tech stack. Let’s use the tool/solution evaluation survey to look at their website first.
- Tool/solution:
- FACTS Excellence Academy website
- Audience:
- Prospective families and students (primary), alumni (secondary), current families (secondary), staff and faculty (lower secondary)
- Short-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- Enrollment growth
- Long-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- Financial sustainability
- How will this tool help us meet our goal?
- Through increased inquiries and admissions activity driving long-term growth
- Team member/team that owns implementation:
- Admin leadership team, IT team, comms & marketing team
- Team member/team that owns tool usage:
- Comms & marketing team
- Team member/team that owns tool support:
- IT team
The school website is strategically aligned to enrollment growth and financial sustainability, which is the best focus for that channel and will get you the greatest ROI. It also provides deeper clarity when you begin evaluating other communication channels, including mobile apps.
Here’s how it looks when FACTS Excellence Academy uses the evaluation survey to determine whether it makes sense to add a mobile app to their school.
- Tool/solution:
- FACTS Excellence Academy mobile app (provided by FACTS Family App)
- Audience:
- Current families (primary), staff and faculty (lower secondary), prospective families and students (lower secondary), alumni (lower secondary)
- Short-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- Retention and communication
- Long-term strategic goal this tool aligns to:
- Cultivating technological and operational efficiencies
- How will this tool help us meet our goal?
- Through targeted, convenient communication directly to current families
- Team member/team that owns implementation:
- Comms & marketing team
- Team member/team that owns tool usage:
- Comms & marketing team
- Team member/team that owns tool support:
- IT team
You can see that while scoping a mobile app for the school, they’ve uncovered that the audience for the app differs from the target audience for their website. The app also aligns to different short- and long-term strategic goals than the website. Under these assumptions, an app could provide value for the school that the website can’t and won’t.
Communicating about the communication tools
Once a tool is implemented, an impediment to progress can be improper communication to audiences — even when the tools are designed specifically for speaking to them. That’s when you have confused parents or family members that check a school’s website, Google Classroom, Facebook page, Twitter account, parent portal, mobile app, and email 2-3 administrators and teachers looking for a piece of information that they just can’t find.
For audiences that must take frequent action (especially current families), it may be helpful to outline all your communication channels and what to expect on them. In our FACTS Excellence Academy example, we’d create a “Where to Find Everything at FACTS Excellence Academy” PDF. We’d put it on the website, in the parent portal, in the app, Google Classroom, and email it out to all current families.
The “Where to Find Everything” PDF could say something like this:
- Snow Days/Inclement Weather:
- Download the FACTS Excellence Academy mobile app. We’ll post announcements there and send a push notification.
- Be sure you have your updated cell phone and email address in your FACTS account. In case of last-minute closures, we may send a text message or notification directly to you.
- Grades/Attendance/Homework:
- All grades: Download the FACTS Excellence Academy mobile app to access school attendance and grade reports.
- Grades 5-8: Download the Google Classroom app to connect to your student’s classrooms for lesson plans, homework, and other information.
- School Calendar:
- Download the FACTS Excellence Academy mobile app.
With a little bit of planning and communication, you can find and deploy the right tools for your school while reaching the people that matter. As always, I’d love to hear more about your school’s tech stack and how you evaluate new tools. Feel free to reach out to me at [email protected].
