Great for Mom, bummer for kids

What did parents do before Infinite Campus? This is one of the best inventions since ... you said it, "sliced bread."

If you haven't heard of this yet, Infinite Campus is the online service provided by the schools for parents to track their kid's grades, lunch money, attendance, you name it. It's awesome ... but ... now that I have a smartphone, it's even better!

I actually get pop ups on my phone that let me know every grade my girls get, when they're absent, when their assignments are due and any tests coming up. I've never felt more in the loop but it made me wonder how parents have done it all these years?

Oh yeah, I know how they did it, they were forced to trust what their kids said, sometimes found crumpled up bad-grade papers in the trash, and got shocking updates from teachers at conferences, and that's about it. The amount of fibs and stories that were told by kids before Infinite Campus was invented has to be astronomical. And that's the part I love the most about it.

For instance, on Monday, my 12-year-old desperately wanted to go watch the basketball game with her friend. I asked her if she had anything due on Tuesday and she assured me that she had nothing, nada, whatsoever for homework.

"Got it all done, Mom!" Of course, unbeknownst to her, I only believe about two thirds of what she tells me, so I went and grabbed my phone and pulled up my handy dandy Campus Portal app. I quickly scanned to her name, tapped on assignments due, and by cracky, she DID have an assignment due on Tuesday! Good try, Sweetheart, but you ain't getting anything past yo mama now!

Twice, just this year, I've gotten pop-ups informing me that my daughter had an unexcused absence.

The first time, it was my seventh grader who didn't show up to her afternoon class. But turns out she was in a good behavior party but no one told her teacher so he put her down unexcused.

I didn't even care about the error; I was just so thrilled that I was instantly notified of her not showing up to class. My poor girls aint ever gonna be able to skip class now!

The other absent was because I forgot to call in to let them know my fifth grader wasn't going to be at school that day. I meant to call but forgot, thank you, Infinite Campus for the reminder! I got to thinking that it'd be nice if this pop-up dealio would work in college too, so parents get an idea of how many classes they're paying for that their kids not at? Just a thought.

Anyways, on the flip side, it's also cool to get my 10-year-old's test grade pop up on my phone before she even finds out.

It's happened a couple times, where she had a big test and studied her little patootie off all week with the hopes that she'd ace it, and before school got out, I got her test grade pop up on my phone. 100 percent!! I couldn't wait to pick her up because I knew how excited she was going to be!

I'm telling ya, whoever decided to install this program and allow us moms access to all this valuable information, I give a huge shout out! I love it and I love not having to wonder if I'm getting buffaloed by my kids.

I'm all about organization and something like this, really floats my boat!

There have been a lot of really cool inventions to make a mom's life easier and this one makes my Top 10 list.

Infinite Campus might be a bummer for kids, but it is GREAT for moms!!