Schools use different modes to communicate with students and their parents. Among these, loudspeaker announcements and printed notices are the most common. Email has also been increasingly utilized over the last decade or so and a handful of schools have recently started trying out text messages . The sudden closure of schools in the face of the rapid spread of the Coronavirus led to much confusion as many schools faced difficulties trying to contact staff, students and parents. These unusual circumstances revealed the inadequacies of traditional modes of communication, bringing to the fore the need for a channel that is accessible to all, regardless of their physical location.

Talito is a unique promotional and engagement space that offers a set of ready-to-use solutions to the communication needs of your school. It has a range of different features that can be applied to the varying aspects of school life. It is relatively simple and straightforward and so does not require a dedicated department to run it. As there is no app download, no additional tools are needed for your many stakeholders to stay informed.

With Talito’s bulk SMS facility you can send out mass messages covering all relevant groups of people (be it teachers, students or parents) in one go. Alternatively, the school can segment the recipients, creating custom lists. The types of groups created are entirely up to you - they can be by class, year group, subject, house, extra-curricular activity, club, squad, the permutations all depend on what happens in your specific institution. Each of these categories can be managed by different people with each admin having control over the content that is disseminated.

One of the strongest lessons that our recent experiences has taught us is that things are unpredictable. Of course, this has been the case in education for a very long time: students suddenly need to stay after school, classes get cancelled at the last minute, and weekend make-up classes or practices are arranged in the spur of the moment. Getting the message across to parents can, at its mildest, cause confusion, and in the extreme, consternation. Talito’s segmented user groups can remove all the mad scrambling with just one SMS to the relevant list. Quite apart from alerts on sudden changes, schedules can be regularly updated and passed on to the user groups.

Competitions form a big part of school life and everyone gets excited over them. Whoever you may be to the participants - parents, friends, teachers and principals - everyone wants to know the results as soon as possible. Talito can provide the fastest channel for getting good news out. Results and placements can be publicized no sooner they are announced.

Academic results too can be sent to students and parents through Talito. A simple Excel spreadsheet with the names and phone numbers of the students and parents is really all the groundwork that is needed. With this in place, you can send out personalized text messages to individual recipients. If you and your students prefer to keep the results private, a weblink can be embedded into the SMS with a password to access this delivered in a separate message. Entire report cards could also be dispatched in this manner.

Just like any other organization, the smooth running of a school is largely dependent on effective communication. While paper-based and internet-based dissemination of information are options, the former takes a toll on the environment while the latter may not be accessible to all. Most of the services provided by Talito are available through regular feature phones without internet as a prerequisite. Thus it is the friendliest middle-ground to keep your school connected with everyone concerned.