Part 2: Remind.com (My 1st Year as a 1-to-1 Teacher)

June 22, 2015

Remind.com was the revelation of the year for this teacher. I resisted it at first because I thought it was too much about taking responsibility off of the students, etc. But, as with every tool, it comes down to how you as a teacher apply it, and it ended up making life much easier and more organized on my end and for the students too.

Setup is simple. The teacher makes a class on the website, it generates a code, the students can text the code to the phone number 81010, they get a reply asking for a name, they input their name and it's off and running. To keep track of things better, ask your students not to use any kind of fake name. If they have privacy concerns, I let them use their first name and last initial, but no "Squidward" or "Xena" names.They then receive text messages with the reminders sent by the teacher, but they receive texts from Remind.com, not from the teacher's personal cell phone.

Students can also submit their email addresses to get reminds at their email accounts if they don't want to get texts from their teacher. There is also a smart phone app for Remind.

For this teacher, Remind totally replaced writing assignments on the board, which I wasn't that good about to begin with. The most useful feature was that I could schedule reminders to be sent (ahead of time)--for instance automatically sending a message two days before an assignment is due and then again the day before.

The reminders also support file attachments and links, so teachers can also include supplemental materials.
And, yes, this is where the issue of student responsibility comes up. One point that I made to my classes right off the bat is that failure to receive a "remind" (or my failure to send one) does not constitute an excuse for not doing an assignment.

Also, if you've been teaching for more than, oh I don't know, six months, you know that this isn't the mythical old days where the teacher's word is gold, and, as regrettable as it is, sending reminders can provide a teacher with ample cover in the event that a student (or a parent) complains they were not given enough time or were not fully informed about an assignment.

Another neat feature is that you can give parents the same connection information and they can choose to receive reminds also. This completely does away with any of the "signing the assignment books" of yore. In fairness, I have only used this with one parent this year and that was a "good parent." I don't know what the ramifications of going wide with reminds might be. Obviously, if you were going to say something edgy or snarky to your students (which you probably shouldn't do), the parents would receive that too.

Finally, one of the better features is brand new. Remind now offers a "chat" function so that teachers can chat directly with students. The pluses are that Remind records all conversations (including reminders), and you can have a transcript of all communications emailed to yourself or someone else, as the need may arise.

Teachers can allow or not allow students to start chats with them. If the teacher chooses to allow the students to start chats, the teacher can set office hours so that students can only send messages during certain times or on certain days.

As a tool, especially with "chat," Remind is at least as functional and useful for the teacher as it is for the students. It's a flexible, non-invasive way for students to ask the teacher questions about assignments, and the same for a teacher who needs to check if a student turned in an assignment or not or clear up some other detail that might have gotten forgotten about in class.

And, it bears repeating, all chats and reminds to and from the students are channeled through Remind.com's servers and transcripts are recorded. That is a positive because it allows teachers a way to reach students where they live (on their phones) in a safe way. But also keep in mind student confidentiality when communicating with students over Remind. It would probably be best not to discuss anything too sensitive (IEP information, for example) if there is a confidentiality concern.