We just started using Slack for mentors this summer and are liking it so far. We have 20 members now and will hopefully be starting the student rollout pretty soon.
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Originally Posted by Monochron
I have heard good things about Slack, but I really don't see how it doesn't end up just being "another thing that I have to check". We just use email lists for group communications, because are already checking their email for school.
I suppose if Slack can notify you of updates via a phone notification, than it could be a little more convenient than email, but then I think that being flooded with notifications could be a problem. And even then, you only get the benefit of phone notifications IF each student has a Smart Phone. If students without Smart Phones have to log in to some Slack web view, then it is more of a hassle than simple emails.
Do teams who use Slack pass information along to parents at all? If so, is that through Slack too (I would be very hesitant to try to force some parents to use it), or does that go through email anyway. Then you are managing both emails and Slack channels.
I would love to be proven wrong  I'm just not convinced of the benefits yet. |
Slack does have a mobile app that can push notifications. You can mute them during "Do Not Disturb" hours. You can also mute channels, or everything that doesn't mention a certain word, like your name.
In some ways it's more powerful than just email because of what it can connect to. Right now we're testing out different app integrations, like Trello for project management, Google Drive for document sharing, and GitHub for code version management. I just started playing with MailClark, which lets you automatically forward emails to a Slack channel and respond from within it. We're talking about using this for quickly responding to parents. I think it could also be used for email blasts to parents.
One big benefit for us is that each subteam had their own separate communication that they used. Mentors sent emails religiously. Electrical had a Facebook group chat. Programming used Discord. Most of the email chains, like for setting up a mentor meeting, just turned into complete messes. People responded at different points, missed important things, slightly changed the subject line and started a new chain, etc. This should fix most of that and centralize communications.