Curated and Reviewed by
Lesson Planet
A wonderful moment has just happened in your class, and you'd like to tell the child's parent, but by the end of the day, you've forgotten. What you need is this app! You can keep in touch with parents and archive classroom moments for your own benefit with just a few taps.
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App Overview
Setting Up Your Classroom:
- Once you have signed up for the app (you can start with a free trial from the website), set up a teacher account by tapping Add in the teachers section and entering your information
- Next, you tap Add in the students section to enter your first student's first and last name
- Select Add Parent and fill out the fields for parent information
- Choose Create Student
- Repeat this process for all of your pupils or contact Kaymbu about importing student data from a spreadsheet
Steps to Capturing, Customizing, and Sending Moments:
- Select one of the camera icons in the top-right corner to take a photo or video; this will be saved as a draft, which you can view by tapping the image in the top-right corner
- Select an image to customize
- Type in a caption (this will be the title) and other notes
- Touch individual student icons to tag them in the photo or tag the entire class or just the teachers; if you choose Teachers, this will not be sent to parents/guardians
- Add other tags if desired
- Choose either Send Now or Publish
- Sending Options:
- Send Now: Send this to the specified parents right away
- Publish: This will save your post and add it to the weekly digest; parents receive all photos their student is in
- Private: Toggle this on to save the image and comments for your own records
Other Features:
- Create special tags to help organize your images
- Send messages from the Kaymbu website (http://my.kaymbu.com)
- Publish single moments or choose several at a time
- Upload images through the Kaymbu website
- View the images you've published of a particular individual in one week and overall
- Save a moment or group of moments as a PDF document
- Add unlimited students and several teachers to the app
Curator Rating
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Adherence to task
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Worth the money
This does require a monthly subscription that is a bit expensive. However, you can add unlimited students and it is a safe platform for parent communication.
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Fun factor
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Scaffolding of learning
The app will take some playing around to learn, but includes a useful help section.
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User safety
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Control and feedback
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How techie do I need to be?
Intermediate
Instructional Ideas
- Try to take a least one picture of every student each week to keep parents in the know
- Use this app for your own records as well; you can tag photos for your thesis, teacher induction program, formal observation, or other meetings with colleagues and administrators
- Send out reminders and other information through Kaymbu; you can add photos and tag the entire class and have it come out in the weekly digest, or send messages from the website version of the program
Classroom Considerations
- While this does share some similar features with other image-sharing apps, Kaymbu is entirely private within your school and provides additional features made just for a classroom setting
- The fee of $25 per month (plus $10 a month if they lend you a tablet for the app) is a bit high, but can be worked with. If you share the tablet with other educators, or get funding for the program, this is a great option for parent communication
Pros
- For a fee, Kaymbu provides hardware (a tablet) if you don't have it
- Kaymbu provides great customer support
- The app will encourage parent engagement in class activities
- You can add multiple teachers and unlimited students to a single app
- You can try out a free trial to see what you think of the app before committing to the fee
Cons
- Requires a somewhat expensive monthly fee