N Elementary School Interview

I am Goda, representative of Miley's Inc. In this interview, we will proceed with the following objectives: 1. To organize case studies of Miley PTA implementation for those considering adoption. 2. To provide an opportunity to reflect on the implementation at your school and make it easier to convey achievements, reflections, and challenges to future generations. 3. To confirm the popular aspects of Miley PTA and areas requiring improvement (feel free to share anything) and use them for future improvements.

Thank you very much for gathering despite your busy schedules. We have exchanged messages several times regarding requests and bug fixes, but I would like to interview you formally once again.

First, could you tell us about your school? What kind of characteristics does your school have?

Did you have disaster prevention lectures or similar activities?

Could you tell us about your PTA organization?

So you operate mainly with officers and some board members?

What activities did you have originally?

What is your relationship with the teachers like?

I see, so the school collects PTA membership fees along with school expenses.

Unfortunately, I can't handle money... However, I might be able to let you know who has submitted it.

Are the PTA newsletters you issue checked by the school?

Do you have your own channel for distributing information?

Once again, could you please tell us about the characteristics of N Elementary School?

How many students are there?

Are there any unique events or activities?

In that case, I will proceed while sharing stories from other schools as well.

Before implementing Miley, did you compare it with other company tools?

Those names often come up in tool comparisons, but kintone requires a certain level of PC skills to use effectively, and it's quite expensive.

What was the deciding factor in choosing Miley? The low cost is often mentioned.

Thank you. (laughs) I don't get praised often, so I'm happy.

What challenges did you have before implementing Miley? For example, the hassle and cost of paper, or having to go to school to print.

Paper really has its limits. Distributing and collecting it takes even more effort.

Were there any issues with paper costs? A school I interviewed earlier saved 150,000 yen per year on paper costs, so even after deducting Miley's usage fee, they came out quite ahead.

Reducing paper with Miley seems to have cost benefits too.

One school in Osaka had to assign about 70 slots combining districts and time periods for patrol duty, and we handled it with Miley's "scheduling feature."

You can set a maximum number of people for each slot, so once the limit is reached, that slot becomes unselectable and distributes people nicely.

We create a chat room for people who selected each slot, so they can exchange information about arrangements. The "scheduling feature" has become almost specialized for assigning flag duty and patrol duty. (laughs)

On the "School Information" page, there's a function called "Contact Administrator."

When you press the "Contact Administrator" button, you can enter and send your inquiry, and the administrator receives a notification. You can also create a chat room to continue the exchange based on the inquiry content.

In the administrator menu, you can toggle "Contact Administrator" ON/OFF. If you set it to ON, you can receive questions from parents.

Yes, that's how it's used.

There's currently no bulletin board-like function. Even if we made one, it could get messy, so I don't think people would use it.

Another function for receiving inquiries is "Contact School," but if the school doesn't use it, you can change the name to "Contact PTA" and use it.

Receiving contacts by changing "Contact School" to "Contact PTA" is easy. However, since it's mainly made for absence notifications, you can't reply or exchange messages.

Using "Contact Administrator" lets you exchange in a chat room, so I think this would be better for two-way communication.

In this case, we skip the step of inviting to the chat room and having them press the join button, and the chat room exchange starts immediately.

Also, we recently made a feature called "Direct Message." Administrators can skip chat room invitations and create chat rooms with specific members to exchange messages.

Not every time, but about a week after distributing an app with major feature additions, if you don't update the app to the latest version, you can't connect to the server. If you try to use an old version of the app, the server returns an error, so you need to move to the AppStore or GooglePlay to update the app.

Generally, within about 3 days of distributing a new app version, most smartphone users' apps are automatically updated by iPhone or Android OS functions.

Recently, schools have finally started using it more, and in one city, elementary and junior high schools are now using it in combination.

It's a case where an elementary school implements Miley, and the junior high school where many children from that elementary school advance also uses it. Miley was made anticipating such cases, so I'm happy it's finally being used as intended.

It's not city-wide implementation; the email service used in that city was going to increase in price significantly. So each school is searching for alternative tools, and they're choosing Miley.

Within your existing organization and committees, were there any difficulties or challenges when implementing Miley?

Have the things you originally wanted to do and the challenges you wanted to solve been resolved?

There are two main patterns. Common among male PTA presidents is issuing an announcement to all parents saying "We will use Miley from now on" and prompting all parents to register at once.

Another pattern, which I think is more common, is starting with just officers, expanding to class representatives, and then to all parents.

I asked a school that registered all parents immediately, and they consulted with the school to issue a notice saying "Both school and PTA will use Miley."

That's right. Since absence notifications to school also started using Miley, all parents joined at once.

Indeed. When it's an application from the school, or when schools use Miley together with PTA, the expansion is very fast.

It was a case where the email service increased in price and the school was in trouble, so I think the school was proactive.

From what I've heard, in many cases schools use email distribution while PTAs use Miley. The reason PTA uses a different tool is that schools don't let PTAs use their email distribution.

Generally within six months of implementation, almost all households are registered.

I heard they send out newsletters and conduct surveys. When you take surveys, there will always be some opposition, but since the majority agrees, they decided on implementation by majority rule.

They held briefing sessions in advance and sent newsletters, then took a survey and issued a notice that it was decided by majority. After the decision, even those who opposed are using it. Perhaps the reasons for opposition weren't that strong.

I think sharing useful information for parents will increase subscriptions. I've heard stories like "Parents were pleased when we timely shared school route safety information."

Right. I think it would be good to quickly share information like suspicious person sightings.

Have there been any other improvements?

I've heard that items containing personal information have decreased. Some schools eliminated emergency contact networks, and parents couldn't contact each other, but they became connected through Miley.

With Miley, you can contact each other within the app without knowing phone numbers or email addresses, so even without emergency contact networks, they're managing.

It varies by school, but I think the mainstream is having parents register with real names and properly enter phonetic readings. Also, many have children's names entered in tags.

Since some people inevitably don't enter properly, officers and class representatives follow up to ensure each class's parents enter properly.

After checking, we use Direct Message to contact parents individually via chat and request registration information corrections. It's also okay to send an announcement several times asking to properly enter profile names.

For group settings, administrators can also set them in the administrator menu.

First, you need to send a Miley announcement asking people to "Please change your group settings." I think most people will change their group settings after seeing the announcement. Please also refer to the explanation page on the website.

Some people won't do it, but you can change group settings for the remaining minority in the administrator menu.

Another method is to change "Grade 1 Class 1" group name to "Former Grade 1 Class 1" or "2021 Academic Year Grade 1 Class 1" and create a new "Grade 1 Class 1." Then people in the wrong class won't receive Grade 1 Class 1 notifications, so they'll think "huh?" and change to the new group.

Finally, after allowing time for migration, delete the "Former Grade 1 Class 1" group.

One affiliated group just disappears from those people's profile information. There are no other adverse effects.

Yes. However, when making changes to shared information like creating or deleting groups, a log is kept in "History." "History" is at the bottom of the administrator menu and records who did what.

I see, so they feel it's all take and no give.

From what I've heard, activities are still restricted at many places. I've heard cases like "Someone didn't know where to collect aluminum cans, so we sent an announcement with photos" or "We timely shared school route danger information."

Also, I heard they're conducting various surveys. They take surveys, discuss with PTA and school, and share results and meeting minutes with everyone via Miley.

By sharing meeting minutes, individual parent inquiries to schools decreased and people became more cooperative with PTA.

Right. I think everyone is frustrated due to COVID, so collecting opinions through surveys and consulting with schools might be possible.

Then it would be good to share meeting minutes.

I think you officers have terms, so how will succession work in the future?

Since activities have been difficult due to COVID and succession hasn't happened properly, that's why Ms. I became an advisor after being an officer, right?

How to succeed... it's difficult.

So you have materials but need to experience it to succeed.

It's difficult to convey in documents and there's no opportunity to experience due to COVID.

Wherever I ask, no one has a clear answer about succession, so it's a difficult problem.

There's an interesting succession practice at one school - they keep video records. They record what preparations were made for events and activities, post on YouTube, and have people watch during succession.

Even when posting videos on YouTube, you can set them to "private," so I think it's possible to create a YouTube channel with a PTA account and have only related people watch.

Are you having trouble managing documents and files? One place I visited had a legendary USB memory containing all past documents, and they'd be in trouble if they lost it. We have them use Miley's "File Storage."

Miley's file storage is 100MB standard. It's hard to explain how many files 100MB holds, but smartphone photos are about 2-5MB, so about 20-50 smartphone photos.

For PDF files with just text and no images, it's about 200KB (1/5 MB), so about 500 files. PDFs with images are several MB, so about 20 files.

By purchasing additional options, you can increase to 2GB or 5GB, so you can store almost all data. Other services have account or device restrictions, but Miley has no restrictions.

Video files get large - tens to hundreds of MB - so attaching and sending is difficult. On the receiving end, if using smartphone data, unless they have unlimited data, it would greatly reduce their data allowance.

Attaching large files is difficult, so Miley also has file size restrictions. If you want to send videos in announcements, you'd attach a URL link to video files on YouTube or Google Drive in the announcement with a note like "This is a video, so please watch where WiFi is available."

Currently, you can't.

Understood. I'm worried it might become unclear "who sent this?" but I'll consider making sender names changeable.

Miley doesn't use original notification sounds; it uses smartphone default notification sounds. We sometimes get inquiries about notification sounds not ringing, but often the smartphone is set to silent mode.

We're also considering creating an original Miley notification sound.

I'll add explanations to make the accounting feature easier to understand.

There's an FAQ page on the website, but there aren't many detailed explanations or usage instructions. I'll consider creating easy-to-understand guidebook-style materials.

Well then, please contact us anytime with requests or bug reports. Thank you very much for your time today.