Thing 22: Your Turn!

Ok, fellow teachers and librarians, get ready for your students to love you!  I am going to introduce you to remind101.  This is an app with which teachers can text students in a safe way.  The way it works is, teachers sign up for remind101 and create a class.

Ok, so now you have set up a class. You can either download the remind101 app to your smartphone or send the messages from your computer. The remind101 app is free.  If you don't have a smartphone,  you can send the messages from your computer.


Now that you have set up a class, students will need to sign up to receive the messages. First, remind101 will generate a number for students to text to and will give you a message to include in the body of the text.  So, my Student Library Advisory Committee will text @mrsricem to 870-776-8329.

Students will then receive a reply message that looks like this:

They will then text their full name, which will add them to my list.  They will then receive a message  that looks like this:

Then, students will get a text message anytime I send them one. Now, I can send them messages from either from the app on my phone or from the computer. If teachers do not have a smartphone, they can send messages from their computers. It will still send from the computer.  

Parents can also sign up to receive these messages. In fact, elementary school teachers will probably want to use this with parents rather than students since most young children will not have phones with which to receive texts. As a Spanish teacher, I would send out a reminder text the day before a quiz, a test, an assignment was due.Sometimes I would just send out an encouraging message, such as "You guys did an awesome job today!" I had many students tell me that they wished all teachers would use this because they loved getting the reminders. I also had a higher success rate on quizzes and tests when I would send students these text reminders. The fact is, most students use their phones or tablets more today than they do their computers.

 It is important to remember that students will not get text messages from your phone number. Students cannot reply to the messages so they will not have your phone number.  Moreover, teachers cannot select individual students from the list to send text messages to.  Teachers can either send them to the group or to no one.