Remind Text Service

A colleague, Virginia Earth Science Teacher, alerted me to a service he had been using.  It's called Remind (used to be called Remind101) that allows teachers to create texts to send to parents and/or students that remind them of certain things.  It is similar to the texts you may receive from your doctor or dentist.  Click here to go to their website to find out more.

I have used it a few times and have been on the receiving end of my son't teacher's texts.  There are a few reasons I like it:

1. It sends the texts from a number that is not your own.

2. Students/parents cannot reply to your Remind text.

3. You can choose which classes you want to receive your text.   

4. Texts can be scheduled to be sent out at a later time.  

There are a few ways students or parents can sign up: you can send them directly to Remind's website and they can use the code specific to their class, print out a QR code, send them an email invite or have them text a Reminder phone number with the class code in the message.  

Happy Teaching!

C

Paperless Meet the Teacher

I just finished day 3 of the 14-15 SY.  We had Meet the Teacher last Tuesday and I decided to go paperless.  As a parent myself I know how much paper a parent can come home with after meeting a myriad of teachers.  I saw on Pinterest how teachers had used QR Codes for back to school.  I thought that was such a great idea and decided to try it out myself.  

I have five sections of World History this year.  I put out five groups of QR Codes with their corresponding class rosters.  As you can see in the picture I have four different QR Codes: one for my email, one for my school webpage, one for this site that takes the parents to the intro video and then one for the Reminder text service (more about that in a later post).  I think the QR codes were well received.  Some parents and students needed to download the QR codes but that did not deter them from capturing the information on their device.   

Keeping with the theme of this post, I thought I'd post a picture of "VirginiaWorldHistoryTeacher" so you could meet me!

Happy Teaching!
C