3 “Outside of The Box” Ways to Use @Remind
When it comes to “things we need to improve on for next year,” quite often, one of the top things on any school districts list is communication. Communication can be conceived in a variety of ways. School districts today are communicating through interoffice mail, email, and by voice over loudspeakers. Recently, one of the biggest trends in educational communication is texting.
Why texting? Everyone working in your school district has a cell phone that can receive SMS messages. Many of those phones are smartphones capable of receiving photos and documents as well. There are many great services in the “eduverse” today that will boast about the ways they can help you communicate with your community, but only one that can provide you with the proper tools needed to successfully boast about your schools “eduwins” and your “eduemergencies”.
Communication 101
Remind is a free service that allows school districts to quickly and reliably send one-way communication to a large number of users. Signing up for Remind is quick and easy, and managing your users can be done from both desktop and mobile devices. The secret behind using Remind at a district level, however, lies in the creativity that you can bring to your district.
At its core, Remind is an amazing free platform for teachers to communicate with students and parents. But, did you know that there are districts using it for larger forms of communication? Simply set up a “Class” entitled “Staff” and you can quickly set up an emergency phone chain for your employees. Each “class” can additionally be set up by a department or by an employee group (administration, teachers, secretaries, custodial etc…) for quicker communication with your staff.
Communication during Professional Development Sessions
Recently, during a large educational conference, Remind was deployed by several teachers both attending the conference and participating virtually from their homes. By using Remind, teachers were able to alert each other to great sessions, and activities happening across the large conference campus. Using the new Attach feature, teachers were able to share documents, photos and much more to a large group of people instantly. This made the conference much more enjoyable and those teachers felt the conference was much more accessible.
Additionally, during a recent professional development conference, a team of more than 20 organizers used Remind to effectively create an enjoyable and exciting day of learning for more than 240 participants. Each of them had access to the admin rights and could text message the group whenever needed. It also provided a great way to communicate with the teachers attending the conference the following year, so that they could market future conferences and improve participant signups for future events.
Communication in the Athletics Department
Remind is such a powerful tool both inside and outside of the classroom. It can help unite students, share information wit parents, and also is a powerful tool on the athletic field. Simply use Remind as a promotional tool for sporting events, scores, and more to share and show off your school spirit to an audience of thousands. Instead of having your student body wait for the weekend to read about the big game in the paper, or sharing a score by tweet, use Remind to instantly share your big win over your rival school.
How to Use Remind Outside of the Classroom
Remind is simply the fastest and easiest way of communicating with a mass audience. If you have a free tool that can help your school district communicate its success, why not use the tool to it’s fullest? I challenge you today to create not just one, but many “classes” on your free Remind account and use all that Remind has to offer.
Share your Stories
Are you using Remind in your classrooms and school districts? Please share your experiences below in our comments section.
About the author, Jeffrey Bradbury
Jeff Bradbury, creator of TeacherCast, and father of the famous @EduTriplets Thanks for checking out TeacherCast today. Please take a moment to find me on all of my Social Media channels!