Most school communication now flows through apps rather than paper, and families with more than one child in a district often find themselves managing notifications from several platforms simultaneously: one for the elementary school, a different one for the middle school, a third for a specific teacher who prefers a platform the others do not use. This is not the result of a coherent communication strategy. It is the accumulated result of individual schools and teachers making separate decisions over time, and understanding the landscape makes it easier to figure out what actually requires your attention.
The main platforms
ClassDojo is used primarily in elementary schools. Its core feature is a behavior tracking system, in which teachers assign positive and negative points to students in real time, combined with a messaging platform and a portfolio feature where students can upload photos of their work. The behavior tracking component is the one that generates the most parental questions: the points system is visible to parents in real time, which some find useful and others find anxiety-inducing. ClassDojo's parent-facing features are free; schools pay for teacher accounts.
Remind is a message-forwarding platform used primarily for one-way announcements, where teachers send texts or push notifications and parents receive them without the platform having access to either party's phone number. It is common in middle and high schools, where ClassDojo's elementary-school orientation is less relevant, and it is often used alongside an LMS rather than instead of one. The platform was acquired by ParentSquare in 2023, which has implications for data and product direction that are not yet fully clear.
Seesaw functions primarily as a digital portfolio platform where students document their learning through photos, videos, and voice recordings, and teachers and parents can comment. It is popular in elementary schools for its student-facing interface, which is simpler than most adult-oriented platforms. Seesaw was acquired by IXL Learning in 2023, raising questions among educators about the product roadmap under new ownership.
The notification problem
The practical challenge for families is that each of these platforms delivers notifications through its own channel (push notifications, emails, text messages, in-app messages) and the platforms do not coordinate with each other. A parent who has ClassDojo notifications from one teacher, Remind messages from another, Seesaw updates from a third, and emails from the district LMS is managing four different information streams, each with a different urgency level and a different expected response time.
Most parents develop informal triage: ignore most ClassDojo behavior updates, check Remind for anything marked urgent, look at Seesaw when there is time. This works until something important gets buried in the ambient noise. The platforms themselves have incentives to increase notification frequency, since engagement metrics matter for their continued adoption, which does not make the triage problem easier.
What to ask at the start of the year
The question worth asking at back-to-school night is not "which app do you use" but "what is the hierarchy of urgency across the communication channels you use, and what should I be monitoring versus what can I check occasionally." A teacher who has thought about this can give you a useful answer. One who has not yet considered it will start to think about it as a result of the question, which is also useful.