Parents Tap Speech Technologies to Get More Involved In Child's Education

NEW YORK , NY - The New York City Department of Education (NYC DOE) boasts the largest school system in the country, with nearly 1.2 million kids, more than 1,200 schools and 80,000 teachers. The school system is organized into 10 regions across the city, with each region containing two, three or four community school districts as well as the high schools located within their geographic boundaries.

 

It is widely understood that when parents are involved in their child's education, the children do better at school. As a result, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein have been encouraging more parent participation, and this year the NYC DOE hired parent coordinators who are working on site in New York schools to address parent concerns and encourage parent involvement.

 

In addition to human resources, the NYC DOE is exploring ways that technology can make schools more efficient and parent-friendly. It made several commitments to exploring how technology can be used to provide parents with better access to information and get them more engaged in their child's education. One of these methods involves working with Microsoft Corp. and Intervoice Inc. to develop a voice-enabled telephony application for parents to check such things as their child's attendance record, course grades and lunch menu for the day. Much of this information is already available to the parents via the NYC DOE Web site, but the NYC DOE is using speech technologies to enable accessibility to this information for parents who don't have consistent access to a computer.

 

"The mayor, the chancellor and others are very concerned about parents who do not have access to computers, or who are not computer literate," said Richard Langford, deputy chief information officer for the NYC DOE. "We've all heard about this Digital Divide, and it's particularly evident in urban areas. We have a large number of parents who are not comfortable with a computer. But telephones are accessible and easy to use, and they are quite comfortable with them."

 

It's not just the Digital Divide that can present a barrier to information. Working parents often find it difficult to juggle their schedules to attend school functions in person. Using Microsoft speech technologies, they have access to information 24x7, Langford says. "Our relationship with Microsoft has really been excellent," Langford said. "And the opportunities for speech technology in the school system are enormous.