TalkingPoints

Talking Points is a free communication tool allowing teachers to quickly message students' families throughout the day. The free application can be downloaded onto iPhone or Android phones (and managed through a computer). If someone does not have a smartphone, fear not! The teacher's communication is sent as a standard text message as well.

 Its primary purpose is to give teachers a quick and direct way to connect with their students' family (assuming you have their mobile number). How is this any different than texting or emailing, you ask? This is where Talking Points stands apart from other apps I've used for family-school communication: 

IT AUTOMATICALLY TRANSLATES THE TEACHER'S MESSAGE INTO THE FAMILY'S HOME LANGUAGE. 

The individual who receives the message can then respond in the native language, send the message, and it will appear in the teacher's language of choice. As the education field continues to change, I feel that this piece of technology is crucial in giving our EL's families a voice without having to rely on another individual to translate it (though the app does raise the question of how we communicate with individuals who are illiterate). 

I also really enjoy this piece of technology because it helps to build community, especially in a dual language setting such as my own where very few parents speak Spanish. In order to help students see themselves as developing bilinguals, it is also that their families experience this as well, and that is why I send my messages in Spanish. After all, I am the Spanish teacher (do they really think I speak and write in English? Nonsense!). 

Now, let's get you set up using Talking Points for your own classroom. 

Go to Talking Points App  

(it should look similar to the image below) 

Here you will create your profile. You can even choose to link your Google account with Talking Points for a quick sign up.

Once you have your profile set up, a tutorial will walk you through the rest if you choose to follow it rather than explore on your own. After creating your account, it will ask you to test run the process on yourself by entering your phone number and "home language" (I suggest you pick one other than English to understand what it looks like on a parent's phone--in the second picture you will see, I chose Burmese). 

Go ahead and send it to yourself. You will get something like: 

Now, here is the cool part. My message was initially sent in English, but since I set the home language as Spanish, it automatically translated it to Spanish (the first part of the incoming message). The parent can then choose to respond in either the home language (Spanish...as they did here) or English. Regardless of the language they choose to respond in, the message will come to the teacher in English. 

While it's unfortunate that I cannot send the initial message (from the teacher) in any language other than English, it is a nice tool to have to connect families and teachers, regardless of the language barrier. As you can see from the teacher's platform, all I receive are the messages in English, but the families receive the messages in both languages, therefore exposing them simultaneously to the languages. 

Once you have tested it on yourself, it is time to add your parent contacts. For this piece, you will need to know the parent's name (or you can simply use the child's name as I have), cell phone number, and home language. That's it! 

**Note: You do have the option to paste the contacts from Excel, but I found when I did that it did not format to my liking. Instead, I manually entered student names and contact information, a total of about 15 minutes for one section. (Depending on your class size, it can take from 5-10 minutes to set up each class.)

This app is an extremely useful one to use to report on individual students or if you want to send an alert/reminder to the whole class. To send an alert, or an "announcement" as Talking Points coins it, select the "announcement" tab on the left side of your screen, select your recipients, and type the announcement. 

You can even "schedule" an announcement or message to go out so you don't forget...how nifty!

Yet another interesting feature of Talking Points that exists is the ability to poll families. Why is this important? It can replace the endless mess of papers going back and forth to school if it is for something simple such as "Will you be attending the school concert at 3pm on Friday?" Parents simply select the options available, and the teacher sees responses on her end. While I have not used the poll feature, all the other aspects I have used, and overall, I have been impressed with the ease of communicating with parents. 

The biggest benefit to incorporating Talking Points into your classroom is that it directly connects the families to you, the teacher, and helps everyone feel that their home culture is recognized and appreciated. We strive to keep parents and families informed, and it has become increasingly challenging with so many languages. Talking Points is one recommendation for a way we can begin to combat and change this so that everyone is aware of their child's learning.