Remind

Remind is a website for teachers to keep in communications with their students and parents. A teacher creates a class, and with a simple text or email, teacher, students and their parents are connecting. From there, teachers can send out reminders content to their students and parents. This content can include study materials, reminders about what is happening the next day, and other important information that students need to know. Teachers can send a personal message to a parent or student, but the messages cannot be edited and a record is always kept. This protects teachers and students.  One teacher said that during a hurricane that scattered her class, she was able to send out text messages to students to find out if each of them were safe.

To use the site, a teacher simply creates a classroom and has students and parents send a code to the number. This connect the teachers and students automatically. Teachers can also put a link to the page on their website and invite others using email.

Personally, I currently have no needs for this site. I did have a need when I was a RA. I would often need to send the girls on my hall reminders. We used the app GroupMe a lot in order to communicate. In our GroupMe, my co-RA and I send out information, but this caused an issue. The girls would send messages to each other using GroupMe, and this got annoying. Girls would turn off notification so that their phones would not receive an exuberant amount of notifications. This often resulted in our girls missing essential notifications. If I used Remind, then my girls could have their group chat while the RA’s could still get essential information out.

In the classroom, this website could be used a lot. For lower elementary age often things are forgotten. From book sales, to permission slips, to returning a library book, and when AR points are due, these are the things that slip through the cracks in parent-teacher communication. This website would make it easy to keep parents informed, without having to trade personal information to parents. One feature that I found would be extremely helpful in the classroom is the paying features. If teachers are collecting money for something, they can simply connect their Remind account to their bank account. From there, parents can send money. This avoids trusting a seven-year-old with money that walks off somewhere between home and school! I would also use the activity feature on Remind frequently. Using this feature, teachers can make an event, such as a field trip, put the date and time, and how much it cost in one message. This makes field trip preparation easier