TAIPEI (Taiwan News) — The Taipei City Government Department of Education (DOE) has upgraded its Campus Parent-Child Account Integration service for the 2021 school year, providing parents access to student information through one unified portal.
In a press release, the DOE said through the CooC app, parents can get alerts when their children arrive and leave school, pay tuition, register absences, review grades, honors, penalties, and attendance records. Parents who have multiple children may also link their accounts to all their children, saving them the trouble of having to create and remember multiple accounts and passwords.
According to the CooC app website, the app also serves as a means for communication between parents and teachers, something traditionally done through a “contact book” (聯絡簿) in Taiwan. Notice sheets and reply slips are now online, while teachers can upload homework assignments, reminders, grades, and other notes daily for parents to see.
While DOE encourages rather than forces parents to use the app, UDN reported favorable feedback from parents. They liked the convenience, lower chance of children losing important documents, and reduced usage of paper.
For first-grader parents in Taipei, the app is a useful tool for up to 12 years, until their child graduates from senior high school. The CooC app is part of Taipei DOE’s CooC-Cloud, an online education platform offering abundant learning and teaching resources for all school levels between first and 12th grade.
The platform’s “OnO Online Classroom,” which provides various self-learning, exam revision, and even advanced placement videos, was flooded with traffic when schools in Taipei were suspended during Taiwan’s COVID-19 outbreak, according to Radio Taiwan International.
Since assuming office, Taipei City Mayor Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) has made efforts to transform Taipei into a “Smart City.” Along with “TaipeiPASS,” which incorporates numerous city services, the “Smart Campus” is also one of Ko’s main focuses.