October 17, 2014 – A 'Remind'er To Connect With Parents

Happy Friday everyone!

This week I’d like to highlight a tool, which can assist you in keeping in contact with your student’s family without giving up your privacy and still maintaining a professional relationship.  The app Remind (https://www.remind.com/ formerly Remind 101) allows the parents of your students, or students themselves if you teach more senior grades, to sign up to receive text messages from you without them seeing your personal cell phone number. 

As a teacher, you simply go to the remind.com website and sign up for a free account then begin by creating a name for your class (i.e. My Grade 4s or Language period 2).  When you click create, you will be given a phone number and text message to have parents/students connect with your ‘classroom’.  Send this code and phone number home with students and ask parents to text the message to the number indicated.  To make it even easier, when you log into your classroom, there is a blue ‘Download Instructions’ box on the right hand side and when you click it, you receive a printable page with all of the information you can send home to the families.  If parents are not able to accept text messages, they can receive the same messages via email.  These instructions are available on the handout, which is sent home to parents too.

Messages can be sent from your computer via the remind.com website, or on your mobile device by downloading the free Remind app.  Simply type the message into the indicated text box on the website or app and the message will be sent to all subscribers.  Messages can also be pre-loaded and sent at scheduled times.  There is no option for replying to texts; so all inquiries will need to go through your school email or voicemail.  Finally, you are also able to send photos, files and voice clips through the application, and if students transfer out of your class or when the year is complete, they can unsubscribe to your messages by simply messaging unsubscribe and the class code to the text number (instructions on the downloaded handout).

Personally, I feel this is a great way to keep parents and students up to date with all the events occurring in the class.  I hope you enjoy it as well.

Have a great weekend!

Cheers,

Stace

May 24, 2013 - 'Smore' Ways To Spread The Word

Happy Friday Everyone,

According to the calendar, spring is finally here and although you wouldn’t know it from the snow and sleet we received last night, so too is camping season.   For me, no campfire is complete without the traditional gooey, chocolaty smores.    The tech tip I have for you this week is a different kind of smore however, an online smore 2.0.

The website, www.smore.com is a fantastic new (and free) flyer creating website which I happened to stumble upon recently and can see being used in many classroom applications.  After choosing the type of flyer you would like to design (event, news bulletin, class advertisement, etc.) you are prompted to fill in a title, subtitle and write a brief paragraph with other in key information.  You are given the option to add pictures, audio, video and events to your flyer.  Other customizable options include changing the theme, colours, font and background photo.When you are finished you can share by printing, emailing, tweeting, posting on Facebook, etc.  Of course, like most online services, upgrading is offered however I believe that the flyers look wonderful with the available free options.   Once complete flyers are set for public viewing as a default, however by clicking on flyer settings you can change this preference to private viewing only.  Here is a mock flyer I created in minutes advertising the Talent Show taking place at Hyland Heights next week...

I feel that this would be fantastic for students and schools to use to promote classroom and school-wide events to parents and the community.  Additionally students could use this application to illustrate their learning about a historical event (i.e. show the events of confederation) or country they are studying.  Personally, I think this is a wonderful way to create colourful and appealing class newsletters which can be emailed to parents or printed and sent home with students.  

I hope you find this new tool beneficial and if there are other ways you find to use it in the class and school-wide please feel free to share them with me. I'd love to hear from you.

Cheers,

Stacey