k12insight.com ■ Retail Price: Price based on student enrollment. Price includes software, implementation, and training for all staff.
Quality and Effectiveness: While social media is a great tool for communication in education, it can be difficult for school and district personnel to organize, prioritize, and respond to the deluge of school-related communications on various platforms. Let’s Talk! provides an easy-to-use dashboard so schools can review all communications sent via social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, as well as voice and email messages, in one place to help ensure speedy and appropriate responses. This streamlining solution from K12 Insight assigns each communication to the correct person or department, such as the head of school or IT department, and monitors response times, feedback scores, and accountability.
Ease of Use: Let’s Talk! is easy to navigate and quick to load. Communication tools for stakeholders are intuitively designed and include “hot topic” buttons such as “safety” and “weather.” Online “dialogues” are simply designed to ensure user comfort. Schools can quickly dispatch a bulk communication to stakeholders with a personalized greeting. A tornado watch and torrential rain recently prompted my school leaders to postpone school for 90 minutes; Let’s Talk! would have helped the school communicate the situation to families and teachers much more quickly.
Creative Use of Technology: Let’s Talk! uniquely brings school-related communications from various online locations together on an organized dashboard. Critical communications can be flagged with keywords, such as safety and weather. Families and staff can initiate a communication in English (or 33 other supported languages), anonymously or with contact information. If contact information is included, once a communication is considered resolved Let’s Talk! automatically sends a feedback form to the initiator with a 10-point scale to evaluate the correspondence. For administrators, the feedback management system includes categories such as concerns, compliments, suggestions, comments, and questions to help organize potential downstream connotations that need additional, and sometimes immediate, attention.
Suitability for Use in a School Environment: K12 Insight has a team dedicated to Let’s Talk! implementation. An experienced and strategic account executive helps each school or district from the ground level with every step in the process. A principal can access all communications and responses to increase internal accountability. Dashboard reports, which are easily downloaded and shared, show trending topics, who is communicating, and school response times. School leaders can set priorities and respond with confidence, based on data from these dashboard reports.
OVERALL RATING:
Let’s Talk! is an innovative product that can help any school or district effectively use social media to improve communication with stakeholders. Let’s Talk! also works seamlessly with K12 Insight’s Engage platform to create and send surveys, gather deeper insights, and analyze data. K12 Insight’s Advisory Services offers collaborative educational research methods from experienced school leaders who can audit and provide solid evidence for recommendations.
TOP FEATURES
● Let’s Talk! effectively uses technology to organize and oversee school-related communications on social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, plus voice and email messages, enabling school leaders to respond quickly and appropriately and prevent crises.
● School stakeholders will appreciate that Let’s Talk! provides one easy way to communicate their ideas, comments, and questions.
● Let’s Talk! provides solid data to school leaders so they can make better-informed decisions with confidence.
