SchoolFox

SchoolFox is an app for teachers, parents and pupils. Many schools still rely on paper media to communicate with families. Teachers write letters and prepare handouts for parents or check signatures 5 hours weekly, a school in Austria uses 25,000 sheets p.a. to reach parents who may not respond or feel sufficiently involved, leaving the teacher underinformed about social problems. Family isolation from school life negatively impacts pupils’ learning. SchoolFox tackles these problems with special focus on security, privacy and social integration.

Teachers send class news to parents via messages, photos and attachments. Parents confirm receipt with one click, a signature-list is viewed by the teacher who easily finds parents who are missing.

Recipients can translate texts into 40 languages for others or invite co-users such as family members to help. With innovative features from popular social media services adapted to the needs of the education sector, SchoolFox fosters teamwork and eliminates language barriers between teachers and parents, while saving time and eliminating paper waste.

Jury Evaluation:

“Schoolfox is a great app! It has a nice and contemporary looking interface that is easy to use. It does not set out to solve every possible problem education may have but deals with one — communication among parents and teachers — which leads to multiple benefits. Everything is done in one app — a teacher doesn’t need to have many channels open. She doesn’t need to use her social media accounts — more privacy is gained. Most of the communication gets paper free, requests and answers can be acknowledged with one button. Expat or migrant parents not speaking the local language will understand easily how their kids are doing at school, or what is happening there — and this may lead to easier or faster integration. Besides strictly school matters extracurricular activities can also be included and this helps community building through the school. The app can easily be adapted to new languages and countries, and this makes it and the framework behind it scalable.” – EYA Grand Jury report