App Comparisons / Jul 26, 2019

Teacher-Parent Communication Apps: ClassTag vs Seesaw

by Sam

Choosing the right communications platform to engage families at your school can be a pretty daunting task. Our goal at ClassTag is to support teachers and to help you get the information they need efficiently and quickly. So, to help alleviate all the back and forth of comparing one teacher-parent communication app with another, we’re here to help you answer this question: How is ClassTag different from Seesaw?

How is ClassTag Different from SeeSaw?

At ClassTag, we connect teachers and families within one, user-friendly app for all of your communication needs. Teachers can choose from a multitude of tools to engage parents in ways ranging from two-way messaging and appointment setting to lofty automatic language translation and supply fund contribution requests.

While there are many differences between ClassTag and Seesaw, two of the biggest are: audience and pricing. For audiences, SeeSaw focuses on portfolios to show teachers and parents what students have learned. Meanwhile, ClassTag is dedicated to transforming the way teachers engage and connect with whole families through its host of integrated tools.

As far as cost is concerned, with SeeSaw, not all features are free, you need to pay for premium ones. On the other hand, Classtag offers teachers all features for absolutely free, and that’s a price that speaks to every teacher’s budget!

Comparing Teacher-Parent Communication App ClassTag with SeeSaw

ClassTag Communication App in Comparison

As the teacher-parent communication app comparison chart shows, all of ClassTag’s features give teachers and families so much more to work with when it comes to connection.

At ClassTag, we help teachers effectively engage parents so that everyone enjoys stronger connection, participation, and support.

Again, with SeeSaw’s focus on portfolios to create connection, teachers will need additional tools and apps to make up for what ClassTag offers all within its one platform. Let’s further explore key features of these two teacher-parent communication apps.

As you read the rest of this guide, you will learn how ClassTag really is your go-to teacher-parent communication app for the following areas:

One-Click Meeting, Event, and Volunteer Scheduling

As you are well-familiar with, teachers need to schedule a variety of things such as meetings, events, and volunteers all throughout the year. Unfortunately, the methods typically used to promote and inform for these scheduling needs, like letters and emails home or website posts, don’t always reach every parent effectively.

All-in-One Scheduling Simplicity

If you subscribe to SeeSaw, unfortunately, there are no scheduling capabilities contained within the app; not even with their paid version. Therefore, you’ll likely need to use another app and/or one of the aforementioned not-as-effective methods to try to reach parents for scheduling.

However, if you need to do things like arrange parent-teacher conferences, set up a calendarized bake sale event, or solicit aquarium field trip chaperones, ClassTag has you covered as your all-in-one scheduling assistant. In just a few mouse clicks, you can set up meeting or volunteer options that work for you and then parents can choose from those very times or commitments that work for them. It’s a scheduling win for all!

Ultimately, ClassTag is the best parent-teacher communication app for easily setting up anything you need to schedule, all within one app!

Google Integrations

More and more schools have made use of the many Google for Education tools and both ClassTag and SeeSaw offer integrations within their apps.

However, ClassTag takes its partnership with Google to elevated levels with Classroom, Meet, and Calendar integrations. All of this totally helps keep parents organized with their school-related commitments.Remember those meetings and volunteer arrangements we talked about? When parents sign up for any event, that appointment will automatically be placed into their Google Calendar. To add, let’s say you want to hold a conference virtually through Google Meet. Through the magic of integration, parent conferences set through ClassTag will automatically sync the Meet conference link into the parent’s Calendar.

On top of this all, through ClassTag, parents will be pinged with automated reminders about their appointments. You won’t have to do any of the leg work with this flexible and convenient form of organization and accountability!

Keeping Parents Informed with the Right Teacher-Parent Communication App

It’s vital that parents are aware of what’s happening in and around their child’s education. As the teacher, you need the best communication tool to maintain this parental connection and engagement.

Automated Digital Newsletters Engage Parents

When using SeeSaw, while portfolios display student work and progress, there is no automatic summary sent out to parents of anything beyond these things.

Meanwhile, with ClassTag, we offer a Weekly Summary newsletter feature which is automatically delivered to parents. Our Weekly Summaries keep parents abreast of all classroom events and happenings and are sent in link form through SMS or email. Recipients are able click through and view a personalized copy according to their notification preferences they’ve chosen.

As the teacher, you can tailor your Weekly Summary or just let ClassTag automatically do it for you. If you choose the latter, our app will place all you have scheduled for the week into your summary and deliver it for you. What a great way to keep parents in the loop!

Inclusion of Every Family

When it comes to including every family in your parent-teacher communications, you’ll often run into limiting factors, no matter how dialed you felt your efforts were. Two well-known barriers to effective teacher-parent communication are differences in language and lack of technology access.

Choosing the Best Teacher-Parent Communication App to Serve Multiple Languages

Fortunately, both ClassTag and SeeSaw will translate your messages for parents who do not share the same primary language that your communications are sent in. However, the biggest difference is that SeeSaw only offers 55 languages while ClassTag will translate messages in over 100 languages in order to best serve our global community.

With ClassTag, parents can set their preferred language in which to send and receive messages and our app will automatically translate accordingly.

If you used SeeSaw, imagine if your student’s family was one of the 45 languages not served? This could communicate even more of a message than what you originally intended, and that’s one of absolute exclusion.

When Parents Have Limited Access to Technology, They’re Harder to Reach

If you want your communication to reach and engage every parent, then having one of the best apps for teachers is necessary. Now, both ClassTag and SeeSaw offer parent engagement tracking. But, ClassTag surpasses the competition because if there’s an issue with reaching particular parents, our app will send you actionable alert suggestions of how to better do so.

You see, ClassTag allows you to send messages to parents through their own established choice of text, email, app, or website. But for those with limited, or even no, technology, our app puts in the work for you and you’ll be prompted with smart recommendations to ensure connection happens.

For example, you’ll be notified when non-responsiveness becomes a pattern as a result of parents who may not have technology access. Then, you’ll be able to print out a personalized paper copy of announcements, reminders, and schedules and send them home to those harder-to-reach parents.

At ClassTag, we know that including each and every parent, no matter how it needs to get done, is important to you. Therefore, it’s important to us, too.

ClassTag is the BEST Teacher-Parent Communication Tool

ClassTag truly believes in making it happen for teachers who want to fully engage families through the best communication efforts. Whether you’re sending parents messages in any language, getting help with connecting with the hard-to-reach ones, or setting up your Classroom Fund to get those much-needed supplies, ClassTag is the clear choice to suit all your teacher-parent communication needs!