The App "Remind"

Imagine! Your students have just left you classroom for the weekend. You are walking to your car and you remember that the money for the field trip is due on Monday. Oh no! Without a reminder, most of your students will forget! Whatever shall you do?

As teachers, many of us have experienced this problem before!

Staying connected with your students outside of the classroom is a growing need for many teachers today. You need to let them know about deadlines coming up, project details, and an array of other things. This growing need also presents issues. As an OCT member, you want to follow the guidelines in the Use of Electronic Communication and Social Media Professional Advisory. You know texting is the easiest and most reliable way of sending messages, but they do not suggest you should text your students. There is a solution! The app Remind!

Remind allows you to send messages to your students but through an app. This way, you have students, or their parents, join your group (which can be made for each classroom). You then create a message and it will be sent out to the people in your group. The people in your group then get a notification to look at the message you have sent. The great thing is that remind hides your personal information (such as your phone number) from the people you message as well as their personal information from you. It is also viewed as a more professional app compared to texting, even though it is relatively similar.

There are many benefits of this app. You can attach photos or files, like an email. You can also translate for parents who do not speak English, as well as send messages to specific students, so that if you need to remind them specifically, you can.

There are still some issues to remember when using this app. You want to be conscious of when in the day you are sending your students messages. It is good to have a cut off, such as around 5 pm. You should also always be ready that if your message was ever printed out and given to your administration, that you would back what you said in their presence.

As a teacher, I plan to use this app in my own practice to stay in touch with my students and their parents. I love the idea, and used properly, I think it would be a great asset to my classroom.

For more information, see:

https://www.remind.com/

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