United StatesThe TalkingPoints Teacher app helps teachers reach all parents and guardians, regardless of language, via text messages in 100+ languages. Our translation is done by a combination of human translators and machines, allowing for seamless communication with all of your families. TalkingPoints helps teachers • Communicate with non-English speaking parents through automatic 2-way translation • Quickly send messages to one parent, a group of parents or to the whole class • Keep their cell phone numbers private by sending text messages through the app • Attach pictures, videos, polls, and files to text messages to share what students are learning in school • Preschedule messages to go out when parents are available to read them "Teachers have busy schedules and don't have a lot of time to learn how to use a new tool, but what I want other educators to know is how easy it is to communicate with parents through TalkingPoints. I love it and use it everyday!” - Ms. Cardenas, ESL teacher TalkingPoints is free for teachers in the U.S./Canada. Sign up today!
Great app at first glance but could use updates.
I am a preschool teacher with 2 separate classes and I also cover our 3rd-5th grade after school group so I’m juggling 3 different family groups which is why I prefer to have an app to communicate and this one caught my eye after I was having issues with a similar app. For a short time, all was smooth sailing. I love the option to have multiple grown-up points of contact as well as an option for messages to translate to home languages. Being able to toggle between groups was a huge selling point as well as the higher character limit on messages than other similar apps allow. The whole app is easy to use, navigate and is visually attractive. I also like that families are not mandated to adding a new app to their phones and are able to communicate via text while I send mass messages from the app. Finally, being able to schedule future messages has helped me stop forgetting to send certain messages. While there are so many aspects that I love about this app, there are some rather frustrating things I’ve come across after using the app for close to a year and over the course of about 6 different classes. First, as a parent, I totally respect an announcement cap of 5 per 24 hours, HOWEVER, as a teacher balancing 3 separate classes, I’d really love that number to also extend to being per class as well. Most times the information I’m sending out is either varying dates/times or all-together different info so having to ration which updates are sent out to make sure I don’t hit that cap is so frustrating when I’m trying to send all my information messages out at once. Also, while the character limit is generous, sometimes longer messages still have to be broken up into 2 or more messages which again makes me hit the announcement cap quicker. Having 3 different classes that will need 3 different announcements, potentially needing more than one announcement per message is impossible with a max 5 per 24 hour. Next, periodically I run into the issue of either not receiving photos or my recipients jotting receiving photos. I have talked with customer service about this and eventually we are able to get them to go through but not know if they’re going through or coming to me is frustrating and can be confusing depending on the situation. Another issue I’ve come across is that if there are 2 or more grown-up contacts in a message for a student (for example, both mom and dad) mom may send a message in that group thread, but dad doesn’t get to see that message so when I reply dad is confused about the context of the message and I then have to explain that mom had reached out. It’s a group message for a reason, I thought and this becomes even more difficult when dealing with students who live in multiple locations and I’m trying to keep all of their adults on the same page. Overall, I’ve enjoyed being able to communicate with my families without giving out my personal phone number, however, these couple of issues really have me considering other options that are out there. Would love an update if these things are able to be resolved!
United StatesDon’t Get It!
This app stinks and won’t let you fix or delete announcements. It always glitches and getting someone to fix it takes forever! Overall a poorly made app!
United StatesA super useful app for family/school communication
This app is extremely useful for great school and family communication! I'm an ESL teacher and I use the Talking Points for Teachers app to communicate with instantly translated text messages with my families while they use the Talking Points for Families app. It's quick and easy to set up an account. As a teacher, I click "add manually" to add a family name and contact phone number, then select their language. My families tell me how much they love the communication all the time. If they have questions about activities at school or their child will have an early dismissal for a doctor's appointment the next day, they can send a translated text message to me, the secretary, or the school nurse. This app is so easy to use. Make sure to keep it updated.
United StatesFrustrating and unreliable
This is my third year using the app as a teacher. While it has a great idea at its core and started as a decent service, the latest version is a disaster. This year it has virtually become unusable. It randomly logs you out without a possibility to log back in, asking for email verification, which never comes through! Customer service has to resolve it. However, if you are not in eastern time zone, they are unavailable most of your work time. Communication with families is crucial and time sensitive. Talking Points does not provide a satisfactory experience for teacher-family communication. Very regrettable!
United StatesOk App - Improvements Needed
The app used to be ok but glitchy. To be fair, the website is pretty slow too. The concept is amazing but 1. often times messages come to me from parents out of order 2. I’m the building ESL teacher and we have over 200 families so it’s frustrating that I can’t send the information to everyone I need to. 3. I used to be able to bypass this by having two accounts (teacher email and personal) but now I need to verify it and cannot. It feels like the 200 limit is on the low slide because there have been years I have had 180 students. Some of our elective teachers have far more. My district would never shell out money for the paid version making this app more hassle than it’s worth now.
United StatesStruggles to load
I love this app. However it can be very frustrating and slow. It takes a long time to load sometimes and after using it for only 3 weeks I’ve already had parents complain about not being able to send a message because the site/app won’t load. It’s really my only complaint, so maybe other things about it are great!
United StatesThe app does NOT a work.
I scan access my account via desktop but the app does not work. It previously worked great. It is an issue that need resolved or my entire school will have to find an alternative app for communication with parents.
United States
Welcome! We're always working to make the app better so you can easily engage with your students’ families. This update includes a few bug fixes and a way to see if families have chosen to leave your chat. To make sure that everyone is up-to-date with the recent enhancements, we are requiring an app update. Please take a few minutes to update your app!
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