#34 Email Notifications for Students/Parents

[Sam Snow]

[This would be a major enhancement, if we decided to
do it.]

Why have to log in to find out if your grades have
been uploaded? What if you could subscribe to an email
notification?

Items to consider:
* Request notifications on a per student/per class
basis, or just per student (or per parent).

* batch processing of notificatons vs. realtime
generation

* preventing repeat notifications if grades are
repeatably updated

* don't enable notifications unless we have a valid
email address for the user.

* interface for admins/semi-admins to deal with
bounces/failures

[TE Knab]

Logged In: YES
user_id=1622732

My girlfriend is using OG to do her stuff and would LOVE
the functionality.

Here's a real world problem:

Sending out grades via email may violate various school
district and state privacy policies not to mention COPPA
issues. (She teaches High School so that's not as
relevant) In several states, its illegal to send out
emails with personally identifable information. What
she's picturing is an email that says 'New grades for
student id 12345 are now available, log onto <site> to see
them'. (its an incredibly bad idea to use a SSN for an ID
anyway, but I digress)

Requiring them to log in PROTECTS their privacy.

We have to remember that we're creating this for teachers,
NOT ourselves. We may be programmers, but the teacher's
needs come first.

[Sam Snow]

Logged In: YES
user_id=449920
Originator: YES

If implented, we should offer the option so that OG sends an email to parents/students based on "trigger points" that they get to define.

[Sam Snow]

Logged In: YES
user_id=449920
Originator: YES

Also include the option of SMS messages via a free service such as http://www.teleflip.com/ or one of the other free services/message methods listed at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS_gateways -- like http://www.corelevel.com/sms/ .

Note that most major carriers limit SMS messages to 160 characters, so it would need to be a short message.