I am also linking up with Techie Tuesday at TechnologyTailgate.com, so hop over and check out more technology ideas when you get a chance!
We all want an efficient easy way to communicate with parents, the community, and even students (when age-appropriate) about classroom activities and assignments. We use classroom newsletters, weekly folders, and agendas to send messages home via paper. As technology has improved, we are maintaining classroom websites or blogs. Even though each of these communication tools is very useful and necessary, sometimes a quick message home via text message gives parents enough information to prompt students on what assignments are upcoming or due. Enter...Remind101.com!
Go to Remind101.com to sign up for your free account. All phone numbers are private and messages are one-way. This is a great way to communicate without having to use your personal cell phones!
Once you sign-up, you will arrive at a screen that looks similar to this:
You can set up multiple classes so that you can send specific messages to certain groups of students. Are you a coach too? Set up a group for your athletes! If students or parents do not want to get involved with receiving text messages, they could sign up to receive emails instead. Your messages are limited to 140 characters, so you do have to be very concise. Talk about a great way to get teach students to stick to the point. Have them write the remind101 message for the night! One of the BEST things is that you can schedule the message to go out later in the day. I usually write my messages during the day while I am thinking about it, but I schedule them to go out around dinner time.
I send messages out 3-4 times during the week to help my students remember to complete homework or remind them to study for an upcoming quiz. I also include messages that give parents an idea of when the next test might be scheduled. When you are ready for students or parents to subscribe, look for a blue button that says "invite students and parents". You will get a printable page that looks like the one below. It will have a number and message to text for subscribers to use to access your messages (removed from image below).
Are you a school leader or guidance counselor? Remind101 can also be used to communicate messages about school events or important school deadlines.
At the middle and high school level, you may find that both parents and students are subscribing to the text messages. If you want an easy, quick way to communicate short messages, give Remind101.com a try!
Happy Reminding!
Kim
(I was in no way compensated for my post. It is my own opinion as a result of experience!)
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