Back-to-school vibes are almost here. And this means it's time to start getting ready for the new school year.

To make preparation for school a little more pleasant and continue enjoying the last days of summer, you should look into the useful features available in the messengers that you use every day.

Let’s speak of them usingthe example of the popular Viber messenger in Armenia.

Make lists of important to-dos and tasks

When it comes to getting ready for school, you can’t do without lists: what stationery to buy, what textbooks to borrow from the school library, and so on. If you don’t want to miss anything, use the ‘My Notes’ feature in Viber. This is kind of achat with yourself, where you can write your notes, make shopping lists, and store various files, including photos.

Notes are also useful for a child - for example, to make a list of the topics to review before the start of the school year.

In ‘My Notes’ it is easy to mark already completed tasks so that only those that are relevant remain on the list. And by the way, there are reminders in the notes, thus Viber can be entrusted with even the most important things - the messenger itself will remind you of them at the set time.

Learn more

A great way to turn learning into a truly exciting activity for a child is to approach the learning process in a playful, child-friendly way. Try to find out which school subjects the child likes most, fantasize together what he would like to do in the future. Based on the interests of the child, you can choose hobby groups for his/her further development.

However, one can learn new and useful things out of the classroom, too. For example, the Viber messenger has many topic-based channels that tell in a comprehensible way about scientific discoveries, interesting facts, and art. Share interesting things with your child right away by forwarding posts from channels to your common chat, or save them in the notes to talk about it at dinner or on the weekend.

Stay up to date with the latest school news

Not to miss important school events and news, communicate with other parents and teachers. A group chat on Viber is perfect for this. It is easy and quick to conduct polls and discuss organizational issues of a class trip, for example, or plan making gifts for teachers on Teacher's Day.

The most important messages can be pinned to the top of the chat, so that even those who join the chat later will not miss any important information.

Stay tuned

The feeling that you are always there will give the child self-confidence and help to quickly adapt to the new team.

Be considerate and stay open to listening if your child has something to share with you. To be in touch at the right time, communicate through instant messengers.

In Viber, you can make not only audio, but also video calls so that the child can see you, and you can see him, for example, during a break.

It is the feeling that you are always there and ready to support that will help the child quickly get used to school and start learning intensively.

When there is no time for voice communication and correspondence, you can send a funny sticker.  In addition to many stickers available in the messenger, you can also create your unique sticker pack in Viber, which will consist of pictures or phrases that are important for you and your child. To create a sticker pack, you need to open the editor in the Viber sticker market or click on the plus sign next to the sticker menu in any chat and select ‘Create Sticker’.

Discuss security, including the digital one

It is important to discuss safety rules with your child, both in the real and in the digital world.

You can share your own experience and discuss what your child should do in this or that possible situation.

Quizzes in Viber will help fix the security rules.

Create a poll in the chat with your child and suggest several answers for each question. It is a good way to learn important rules.

Since the children spend too much time online, don't forget to discuss what personal information on the Internet should not be shared with anyone: parents' passport data, bank cards, and passwords.

Viber has many features that will protect users from unwanted contacts. For example, in the privacy settings, you can hide the display of photos from users who are not in the contact list.  Messages from unfamiliar contacts automatically end up in the Conversation Requests folder, the Anti-Spam Calls feature restricts notifications of calls from numbers not included in the contact list, and the Auto Spam Check feature protects against potentially unsafe content. All these options are available in the privacy settings of Viber.