You have heard of mobile messaging platforms like WhatsApp and Snapchat, but here is an app that exclusively connects parents of children studying in a school.
At a time when issues related to schools such as safety of children, especially girls, has come into focus, Talkative Parents, as the app is called, has the potential to help parents in many ways. According to Mahesh Vorkady, CEO, Talking Parents, there are two main sections in this app — ‘talk’ and ‘listen’. The former has features such as ‘peer-to-peer chat’ where registered parents whose students are in a particular class can chat with each other.
The sounding board allows parents, irrespective of which class their wards belong to, to chat with all other registered parents of a school. In the ‘listen’ section, parents can post and discuss various subjects such as interesting events for children, tuition, notification by schools etc. ‘Talking Parents’ even allows schools to register with the app and provide information to parents. At present, around 800 parents have registered with the app and talks are one to also include various schools, Vorkady said.
Anjana Deepak, a parent, has been using the app for over a month now and says she found it quite useful. Her child studies in class 1 in a prominent school in Bengaluru.
“Parents discuss a number of important things announced in my son’s class, keeping me well-informed. If there are any changes in the normal schedule of the school, say a school bus driver is changed on a particular route, parents immediately inform each other through the app,” she said.
One might argue that all these functions are possible even on the existing chat platforms, so how different is ‘Talkative Parents’. Mahesh has this to say: “Parents who connect through existing apps are doing so in a very haphazard manner. Any irrelevant information may be shared and even a third party not concerned with parents issues may gain entry. This app solves all these problems,” he said.
Published 18 September 2015, 21:05 IST