Kerala - Thiruvananthapuram   

Keep tabs on your child through SMS

Sangeeth Kurian

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The next time your child bunks school or forges your signature on the progress card to escape punishment, you might just know about it in an SMS from the school authorities.

Welcome to the world of cyber-tracking, an innovative method devised to keep schools, students and parents constantly in touch with one another.

Titled `instaBeep,' the facility enables educational institutions to send automatic or manual SMS to parents on their mobile phones regarding exam and fee schedules, marks, fee dues, function invitation, absenteeism report, performance appraisal and any other incident of significance. The system also responds to specific SMS requests sent by parents regarding any of the afore-mentioned aspects. The parents would be provided keywords to access the information.

Introduced by Spaceage Solutions, a software company based in the city, the facility was launched at Carmel Girls' Higher Secondary School, Thycaud, by Minister for Education M.A. Baby on Friday.

Bino Chakupurakal, director, marketing, Spaceage Solutions, said: "The technology enables schools to select the target group according to their requirements, whether the information proposed to be conveyed relates to any particular student, a group of students, students belonging to a particular division or students travelling by a particular bus.

"The facility can also be a convenient medium for important announcements and to call staff and PTA meetings at short notice," Mr. Chakupurakal added. He said the schools would be able to send the message at a reasonable price of 10 paise to 25 paise per message.

Radhika C. Nair, president, CARMA, Carmel alumni association, said: "The SMS alert is of great help in emergency situations such as strikes, hartal or the declaration of a holiday at short-notice."

Mr. Baby advised the students not to be upset by failure. "Failure is the stepping stone to success."

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