We're excited that we've had so many wonderful entries - in fact it was incredibly difficult to choose the winners. But someone has to make the hard calls, and so we're very happy to announce the winners of our first MessageMyWay competition, along with their entries, are:
We could have used it both times when
Our school received a call
There is a bomb inside your school
"Evacuate them all"
The staff and kids were on the field
Three hours in the rain
The police were called, the bomb squad too
It really was a pain
With anxious parents phoning us
We tried to reach them all
By social media and website
But hit a big brick wall
The feedback was it would have helped
And worry be abated
Putting the frantic minds at ease
And keep them all updated
A one off text sent out to them
Would be just what we need
Informing them of the plans in place
And to keep them up to speed
It was a hoax and we were fine
But it would be great to tell
In an easy message to everyone
That all was safe and well
Please pick our school to win the prize
Message my way for a year
This would have been the perfect tool
To alleviate the fear
We would love to enter the competition as we think our school needs an instant and user friendly communication service for our parents. Once upon a time there was a bus full of children heading down the Southern Motorway after a lovely day out at Sumner beach when all of a sudden..... BANG! One of the bus tyres blew out. Luckily the driver had the bus under control and managed to pull it over to the side of the motorway. Fortunately our children were all safe, however they were going to be very late returning back to school. It was very time consuming with making phone calls, sending emails and waiting at the gate to inform anxious parents about the delay. This would have been so much simpler and instant if we had MessageMyWay at our school. This is one of many occasions where we could have benefited from your fabulous system eg ski trips, camp delays, sports cancellations etc......We hope we win!!!! Tegan and Sue (overworked office ladies who would love a simplified system like yours☺).
We have to try and communicate with our giant community of low income families - many don't have internet but somehow they have smart phones! We have events that try to bring families together and get parents into school after hours to play sports, learn to cook, talk and help each other with reading and maths and other amazing things. It would be most helpful to use an app like this to get the word out fast and easy so our parents are always being encouraged to show up. Part of our battle is keeping kids together, engaged with their families and to treat ALL of us as one giant whanau. This is an app that would be well used by our large school that fights so hard to keep families working together with our amazing and passionate teaching staff.
A time that this would have been useful, was when we had the lockdown in July 2016 and we were on site, for 9 hours. After full school evacuation, classes had been in lockdown for a long length of time, and we didn’t have an effective way to communicate to 300 families.
How I wish I could have sent out a MessageMyWay alert to my school whanau and community last year when Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office asked that people working in the CBD and children attending the inner city Wellington schools go home early due to severe storm warnings and flooding. I had to arrange for families to collect their children before the usual 3.00pm pick up. An alert out to all my families would have made the contacting of families so much easier.
An honourable mention goes to Manu School for their "wee poo problem" which required a full school evacuation!
Thanks for all of your entertaining and sometimes heart-breaking entries. We wish we could give you ALL a free year's subscription.
Don't forget that you can always sign up for our free trial and have a play with the real system, anytime you like. And there's always a friendly someone at the end of the phone to answer your questions...
Last updated Tue 25 Apr 2017 by MessageMyWay Support.