[bcampbell]

For communication our team uses Slack. It is a great resource for communication with the entire team and smaller groups such as each sub team which each have their own channel. In addition Slack has integration with google calendar which automatically posts new events that are added to the team calendar like lab hours and competitions. Slack even sends out a reminder about events in the google calendar. Slack has a ton of other sites that it integrates with such as github.

We also used it with parents at competitions as it has push notifications so it made making announcements at competitions when everyone is spread out easier.

We still maintain a group email with parents and students but primarily communicate through slack now.

We have setup our own checkin system in the lab. We have a checkin computer and each student is given an ID code when they register with our team. The checkin computer is a raspberry pi that is connected to an old monitor. Students login and logout every day on the computer by entering the ID code. The ID codes also bring up a picture of the students so it gives us a quick visual of who is in lab. The computer syncs with a server so we can look up hours from any computer. If a student forgets to log out that day they lose their hours. If you want more information about it let me know and I can ask the mentor who set it up