Remind is a Great way to Connect

As a Principal in K-12, and now as a Dean at the College level, I have often wanted an affordable and secure way to communicate with my staff or students when I needed too. That is now possible with Remind. Remind is a free text messaging platform that helps teachers, students and parents communicate better. I was told about Remind by one of the department chairs on my campus that uses it and I have found that Remind provides a simple to use technology connection with stakeholders in the classroom, at home, or anywhere in between!

What is Remind?Remind was designed to increase parental and student engagement via texting. Teachers, staff and college faculty can group text, or send individual texts to any school stakeholders who choose to receive the communications. Most educators know that increased communication and engagement is linked to increased student performance. One study showed that teacher to parent communication about homework increased homework turn-in by 42%. The study also demonstrated that parent-teacher communication kept students more focused and increased participation (Kraft & Dougherty, 2013). Remind was developed by two brothers Brett and David Kopf with support from Imagine K12 in late 2011 to “tackle what they saw as one of the key problems in primary education: The lack of simple, user-friendly tools that help teachers better communicate with both students — and their parental units.” Today, in spite of how critical effective communication is within the K-12 learning equation, “schools continue to rely on intercoms, PA systems, paper-based permission slips and phone trees. In other words, the same tools they’ve used for 50 years. Remind founders believe that the first step in communication is to reduce the barriers, or make it easy, for parents and teachers to bridge that communication gap and encourage a more regular dialogue between each party” (Empson, 2014). Remind can help educators communicate in a free and easy manner.

Communicate faster. Real-time messaging for your school, group, or just a single person. Schedule reminders ahead of time.

How does Remind work?
Remind is a free text messaging app that helps teachers, students, and parents communicate quickly and efficiently. I started an account to send meeting updates and information to the staff and faculty on my campus. I have found it is much easier than email, and I can send information and news I forgot to send while at work. I have already received positive feedback and this is a tool I intend to use from now on. Remind is a reliable platform and they update the app every two weeks with features that help simplify communication and improve speed and performance (Remind, 2018). Remind provides step by step assistance and was very responsive to my questions. They even provide a professional development presentation to introduce the app to staff, students, parents or district personnel. I give this app my best endorsement and feel that it would help administrators better communicate.

Remind features.
Fast: Messages are sent in real time to an entire class, a small group, or just a single person. You can also schedule announcements ahead of time and attach photos and other files.
Accessible: With Remind, you can send text messages straight to any phone, including flip phones. To reach every family, translate your messages into more than 70 languages before you send.
Effective: Use delivery receipts to see who's reading your messages. If you're organizing an activity like a field trip or event, use Remind to manage the activity and collect funds.
Safe: Cell phone numbers, email addresses, and other contact information stays private on Remind. Remind's guidelines, practices, and features have been designed to protect the safety and security of users and their personal information. Remind has been certified by iKeepSafe for privacy practices related to and COPPA, FERPA. (Remind, 2018)

How can Remind help?
Not only is the app a simple messaging tool for teachers to securely communicate with students and parents in a way that maintains privacy, Remind now includes an activities feature that makes it easier for staff and faculty to coordinate trips, fundraisers, and other events and if in K-12, reach parents for their approval and participation. According to the developer the "activities app" saw a four-time spike in usage in the first month it went live (Konrad, 2016).  Click here to find the top 10 remind uses!

What do people say?
Over 500 GTCC employees or students use Remind based on their website data (Remind, 2018). It is useful to college faculty as most students have phones and bring them to class. All of the faculty I spoke with used Remind weekly to communicate homework, class assignments and basic office hour tasks. Some of the comments were:

• “Remind is quick and easy to use! My students enjoy hearing from me between classes and I get more work turned in on time.”
• “I enjoy this app because I get updates on my son from the teacher and it gives peace of mind.”
• “It works very well. It really keeps me connected to the teachers who use it. It is very quick and easy.”
• “Easy to use & usually reliable... Had a few times my message didn't get sent over the past 2 years, but it's free!”
• “I Love it, it's very easy to communicate with teachers.”

Summary
I started an account to send meeting updates and information to the staff and faculty on my campus. I have found it is much easier than email, and I can send information and news I forgot to send while at work. I have already received positive feedback and this is a tool I intend to use from now on. Remind is a reliable platform and they update the app every two weeks with features that help simplify communication and improve speed and performance (Remind, 2018). Remind provides step by step assistance and was very responsive to my questions. Remind even provides a professional development presentation to introduce the app to staff, students, parents or district personnel. I give this app my best endorsement and feel that it would help administrators better communicate.

References
Konrad, A. (2016). Parent-Teacher App Remind Passes 20 Million Users, Taps Former Bleacher Report Boss As New CEO. Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2016/09/14/remind-passes-20-million-users-appoints-former-bleacher-report-boss-as-ceo/#7203eb071947

Empson, R. (2014). Red Hot Remind101 Gets $15M from John Doerr to Bring Free, Secure Text Messaging To Teachers. TechCrunch. Recovered from https://beta.techcrunch.com/2014/02/04/remind101-gets-15m-from-john-doerr-to-bring-free-secure-text-messaging-to-teachers/

Kraft, M. A., & Dougherty, S. (2013). The Effect of Teacher-Family Communication on Student Engagement: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment. Journal of Research on Educational Effectiveness, 6(3), 199-222. Recovered from https://scholar.harvard.edu/mkraft/publications/effect-teacher-family-communication-student-engagement-evidence-randomized-field

Remind (2018). About Remind. San Francisco, CA. Retrieved from https://www.remind.com/about