How many smart phone users consume their favorite social
media sites like Facebook, Linked In, or Twitter via a mobile web browser? The answer is very few and usually they only
do so if forced to use the browser by clicking a link that opens it. Why is this?
Why do consumers want to avoid surfing web sites on their mobile devices’
browsers? The answer is that most
standard web sites, when looked via mobile phone’s browser, are hard to see, hard
to navigate, and often don’t support mobile browsers well. The end user experience in these browsers is
about as pleasant as a trip to your local Department of Motor Vehicles to renew
your license.
Social media providers have long figured this out and built
apps for major phone and tablet platforms.
Stores are increasingly figuring this out and following the likes of
Amazon with building mobile shopping apps. Banks are all over this bandwagon. But schools and districts have not figured
this out.
Schools typically still only provide a normal web site to
mobile devices. Sure, some provide a
parsed down mobile version, but even these are somewhat hard to find. Are schools’ customers different than retail
or social media customers? Heck no –
they are the same people with the same preference for consuming web through
mobile apps. Most school customers are
still getting Y2K versions of web sites built for Netscape Navigator delivered
to their smart phones.
School CIOs need to address this shortcoming and get mobile
apps built with easy to navigate user interfaces. And to have a successful app, it will need to
be for both Android and iOS. Additionally,
it must have data that is personally important to parents and students. That means grade and attendance data is a
critically important inclusion. Other
high value content such as menus, athletic schedules, athletic scores, and
assorted news are welcome additions.
There are many roads to getting this done. Some are
expensive, such as hiring a third party to build custom apps or hiring
personnel with app development skill, but this may be a fine fit for a large
district. Sometimes more limited apps
are included with a student information system (SIS) and are probably the best
fit for small districts and schools.
Consider including this as a requirement when adopting a new SIS. There are also low cost or free ways to get
an app. At Judson ISD we built an award
winning app for a low cost without personnel dedicated to app programming,
using the low cost web-based Conduit
mobile platform. A full presentation
of our app and experience is available on Slideshare.
Or you may use a simple free service such as iSchoolBox, which may be a great way to
test the waters and get your school into a mobile app (one app the hosts many
schools’ mobile sites). At the end of
the day, the consumer demand is there and as CIOs and technology leaders, we
need to stop delivering craptastic web sites to phones and tablets when our
customers’ preferences have evolved well beyond this.
