Abstract:

The development of the Internet and the World Wide Web (WWW) and the growing influence of digitalization and technology on every aspect of life have changed the way people communicate. Various ways of direct or group communication are made possible regardless of distance (video calls, chat applications, forums, social networks, etc.). The application of these possibilities and technologies has also changed the way parents, educators and preschool institutions communicate. In addition to live communication between parents and educators, most educational groups now use applications such as Viber or WhatsApp to coordinate and share important information and photos. In addition to the benefits of these communication methods, there are also undesirable consequences. Certain important messages are overlooked by parents due to the large number of messages, and educators are also contacted by parents outside of working hours.

This paper presents the development process of the web application "Kindergarten connect", which aims to facilitate communication between parents and educators in preschool groups. The aim of the application is to replace other means of communication and provide parents and educators with a unique platform that contains all the information about the educational group. It consists of a notification area, a chat group, a display of upcoming activities and an area for group photos. In relation to the learning group, parents are shown various content that can be edited by the educators. Educators can add and edit group members, notifications, activities and photos.

The web application was developed with the Django development framework and uses the PostgreSQL database and the cloud services Amazon RDS, Amazon S3 and Heroku. The paper describes the technologies used, the initial setup of the project and the application and defines the application's data models. It also describes the creation of views and templates and explains how the application was connected to the AWS services Amazon RDS and Amazon S3 and set up on Heroku.

All functionalities of the developed application and their benefits are also explained and described.

Keywords:

Parent-educator collaboration, educational technology, preschool management, web application development, communication platforms, early childhood education.