Originally posted by Jill Karas on September 15, 2019
Brightwheel is a combination of a messaging app, scheduling system and a note-taking environment for early childhood educational centres (daycare centres, dayhomes etc.).
It is a great example of currently available mobile technologies utilized to serve people in a triple intersection of needs – managers of daycares who need to schedule and manage the administrative aspects (e.g. parents dropping kids off, changing pickup times, paying fees etc.); parents wanting to know what their kids have been doing; and teachers being able to both show their skill and care (send pictures of in-class activities, write notes about the child) and get information from parents if/when needed.
With 5G and IoT this app could be even better. For example if the child’s daily record includes a brief video taken during the day (without the teacher having to do it manually) or a record of the child’s interaction if a visual app on her tablet.
Average: 4/5 Stars
Many online platforms are geared towards providing feedback to the parents about child’s progress in education settings (daycares and schools). Parents are an important stakeholder group – I often have encouraged parents to be supportive and take part in their child’s learning. Often, parents will ask their child the question “How was your day at school?” or “What did you learn today?” and often the child will respond back “Nothing”. While it can be a useful tool to see and receive the child’s progress in a timely manner, some challenges and questions still remain unanswered. One of the problems that I have heard is often parents are not sure what to do with the information. The information is only a snapshot and may be missing the context of what the child was engaged in. The other issue is the privacy of students, family and teachers. Many educators and school do consider privacy when determining which platform will be utilized, but many of the platforms that are more “mainstream” seemed to have privacy issues.