Head Start C&FDP, Inc. serves both Head Start and Early Head Start families across 6 counties. The center-based Head Start program and the home-based Early Head Start program both serve low-income and high-risk families from a diversity of cultures and languages. They believe that “Head Start is the national commitment to give every vulnerable child an opportunity to succeed.”
Head Start C&FDP wanted to create a Facebook page for each classroom to share pictures of their children in play and classroom activities, but they realized that Facebook didn’t have proper privacy credentials. Learning Genie’s privacy compliance was the perfect solution for them. They also wanted to increase and modernize engagement with the families in their program, especially with non-English speaking families.
With our program, they have the capability to reach ALL of their families safely and securely through our mobile app. Families can receive events, reminders, pictures of their children, and more–all of which can be translated into 104 languages. The staff and families can also have a direct way to communicate with one another about updates on their children and anything that needs to be communicated immediately through our auto-translated 2-way messaging. Everything is received on the families’ phones through the Learning Genie app, which is not tied to specific phone numbers or specific mobile devices.
Our software is safe, secure, and compliant! We are certified by iKeepSafe as being compliant with FERPA and SOPIPA, and we adhere to all U.S. local, state, and federal laws that govern student data.
184 of their 284 children have at least one family member signed up, which equates to about 67% of their families. Between February and March, an average of about 200 parents logged into the app each month to get updates about their child. This is more than 1 parent per child!
Through the Learning Genie video-book feature, families read 97 books, which contributed to more than 10 hours of in-kind. This demonstrates that families are becoming comfortable and excited about receiving these resources. 19.6% of the time spent reading was by father figures.
Here is a screenshot of their agency’s family engagement dashboard, where administrators can see which engagement items are resonating well with families, and where to improve.
When the Learning Genie was introduced to me, I was very excited about sharing with the parents what I was teaching to the children on a more personable level. One of the most valuable features that I used was taking photos of the children doing activities and being able to send the pictures electronically to the parents on a daily basis. The parents were very excited each day to receive their email and see what their child had learned. The parents would use information we provided on a daily basis and talk about what they learned at school. This was a great conversation starter. Most children would come home from school and ask their child what they learned at school today and most would say “nothing I just played”. With the daily information I found that the children showed what they learned at school sometimes teaching their parents some things.