Tried It Tuesday {Remind 101}

Happy Tuesday!  It's time for another week of Tried It Tuesday. :)  I love reading all the wonderful ideas bloggers link up each week.  Thank you so much for sharing and reading!

My Tried It:

Remind 101
 I have been reading about Remind 101 on other blogs for awhile now and kept telling myself that I needed to try it.  Well, I finally did it!  From Remind 101:

Remind101 was built, in conjunction with educators, to solve communication obstacles between teachers, students and parents. Across all grade levels and institution types, Remind101 is a safe and simple communication solution to help teachers extend their classrooms.

Teachers are busy. Our mission is to make tools that are simple to use, but highly effective. Signing up takes less than two minutes on the website, iPhone app, or Android app, and it only takes seconds for students or parents to join a class. Safety is a primary feature, teachers never see students/parents phone numbers, nor will students/parents see theirs.

Here is a snapshot of their homepage.

 It literally only takes minutes to sign up and set up your classes.  Once I signed up, I sent a specific coded text message to a phone number they gave me.  The directions looked like this:

I also printed a page like this for my parents to sign up.  I divided my three ELA classes into three separate groups in case I ever need to send out a message to just one of the groups.  A message can easily be sent out to all three groups by clicking on each class as shown in the screenshot below.  Just click where it says "Click to add classes."

I tend to be very wordy, and wanted to note that text messages are limited to 140 characters (see orange box below?).  You can also send messages immediately or schedule them for later!  Parents can also choose to have messages sent via text or email.  I had almost exactly 50% of my parents sign up for Remind 101, but it is still new.  Once it starts to catch on, I think more parents will sign up in the future.  I don't think any other teachers in my building have used it.

I was under the impression that I could send messages individually to parents or to a few selected parents, but that was not the case.  I have to select a whole class and send out the message to everyone.  This is still great for parents who are apprehensive about giving out their cell number but would like to receive reminders about upcoming events, assignments, or schedules.  

I even had a few parents comment on Remind 101 at parent conference time and wondered if they could get more messages.  Some parents would like to get a message for the homework assignment each night even though students write down their homework on their chart every day.  We write down the homework together as a class but sometimes there is "that student" who chooses not to write down the homework. I walk around and check to make sure they are writing it down but not every day (it always amazes me when I find students who didn't write it down!).  Especially after the first couple weeks, fourth graders should be able to write down their homework when we do it as a class together and I feel I need to give them that responsibility.  Regardless, I freely give out my cell number to parents that I need to stay in constant contact with.  Sometimes I have parents who text a lot and that is always the best way to reach them on an individual basis.  

Remind 101 is a quick way to send messages to the whole group and keep those lines of communication open (and it's FREE!).  Here are some recent statistics:

Teachers use text every day to communicate with their classroom:

• Nearly 3 million texts messages are sent a day via Remind101.
• Each message goes to an average of 50 students and parents.
• Over 20% of messages sent are scheduled in advance.
• The average Remind101 teacher sends 5.8 messages a week.

Disclaimer: I have no affiliation with Remind 101 and was not contacted by them.  :)