remind101

10 Reasons to Add Texting to your Classroom

Effective classroom communication is a key ingredient in any teaching strategy.

On Remind101’s first Hack Day we pulled 10 of our favorite stats about texting in schools and put them into a beautifully designed site to show how adding texting to your classroom communication plan can benefit students.

Click on any image to check out the full interactive infographic created by our lead designer, Lindsay!

Visit the interactive infographic to share and learn more!

Remind101 Hack Day 3/1/13

By: Christine Garland

Last Friday the entire Remind101 team paused our normal tasks and spent a day creating something new for the company. It was great way to finally put to fruition some of the fun ideas we’re always talking about, but never have the time to do.

Here are the fun projects that came out of Remind 101’s first Hack Day:

The Development Team:

Jeremy made us a robot! Her name is Rosie. We can talk with Rosie in our team chat system (we use HipChat), where she is able to answer questions about the status of our servers and delivery in seconds. Rosie can also start Google hangouts, make fun of us, solve math equations, and more.

Ben put on his anti-bullying hat and created filters that detect hateful content, or inappropriate messages attempting to be sent out. As a team, work needs to be done to better train the system on what is and isn’t appropriate. Once done, we’ll be able to add another security layer to the Remind101 service.

Max is our Android developer (more on Max soon). He spent his Hack Day making an Android widget for Remind101 subscribers. When live, students or parents receiving messages on their droid will be able to drag and drop a widget that shows them their unread Remind101 messages in a single feed. Stay tuned.

David worked on building a chat room that displays any tweet where someone mentions Remind101. Now the entire team gets to enjoy the 140 characters worth of pure motivation.

Design and Marketing:

Lindsay and I worked together on a project. Lindsay had the amazing idea to spend Hack Day compiling and sharing nuggets about how texting in the classroom benefits students. So we put together 10 of our favorite stats, and Lindsay created a beautiful website showcasing them. Check it out here.

Brett wrote a blog post welcoming Ben to the Remind101 team, and embarrassing the heck out of him by posting an adorable photo of him at age 7.

It was a great day! So great, that we’ve decided to make it a regularly scheduled activity. We’ll be implementing a Hack Day every 3 weeks. Can’t wait to see what else gets created!

Want in on the next Hack Day? We’re hiring. See available positions here.

Brain Teaser: Remind101 is more popular down South - help us figure out why!

By David Kopf

It’s true, of the 50 US states, we are disproportionately popular down south. We’d love to explain this phenomena, but our theories have run dry. We were ready to give up until a good friend and advisor, Andrew gave us the bright idea of soliciting our readers for help. If you have a theory that could unravel this riddle, post it to the comments section below.

~ The Data ~

In pure aggregates, Southern users make up 60% of our base. The leading states are (in order):

Texas
Georgia
California
Michigan
Florida
North Carolina

Aggregates however, don’t tell us the full story (think of it this way, 100 users in Wyoming is more meaningful than 100 in New York).

For deeper insight, we calculated density by dividing the number of users by that state’s population. The results are even more conclusive: Twelve of the top thirteen most densely populated states using Remind101 are down South. Here are the top six, ranked by population density:

Georgia
Arkansas
Texas
Kentucky
District of Columbia

Ok, so we’re kind of popular down South in aggregate, and even more popular as a percentage of the population. The question, is why?

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~ Extra Credit ~

Dear students,

Why did the author decide to rank states by density?

How many messages should you be sending home a week?

By: Christine Garland

The concern that started my research on messaging frequency was from a number of teachers who asked how many times a week they could send a message without being annoying. In other words, “at what point am I just bugging them?”

It’s hard to make generalizations about how often you should be sending out messages to your students and parents. Our data can tell us averages on how often teachers are sending out messages, sure, but it’s based off of so many varying types of classes, teachers, students and schools, that the numbers seem too unspecific to be the basis for any communication strategy.

Nonetheless - they are interesting!

I used two methods to find out how often teachers are using Remind101. First I asked around Facebook and Twitter to see how many messages teachers said they were sending out to students in a given week. The results:

Most teachers responded that they send at least one message every school day, but right behind them were teachers that said they average about two messages a week.

Then we looked at our own data. We pooled all of our regularly active teachers (we qualify someone as “active” if they have logged in or sent a message in the past 30 days), and found that on average our users are sending 5.8 messages a week.

(Not sure how to quantify .8 of a message, but you know, statistically speaking.)

Unlike my social media poll, that number includes Elementary teachers, that are communicating with mostly parents, as well as the teachers communicating directly with students.

Based on this first round of data digging, a message a day seems to be the norm. Does that mean sending 8 messages a week puts you over the threshold? I’m not sure, but I promise to keep trying to find out for you!

In the meantime, I’d love to hear from some of our teachers on this topic:

Have you found the right formula? Is there such a thing as too few or too many messages a week? What about a day?

Wondering the same question as I am, help me get more teachers in the conversation by sharing this post - just use the sharing links below!

Welcome Ben!

It’s my absolute pleasure to introduce our most recent full time hire, Ben. Ever wonder how messages get sent each and every time you hit send, or when you click ‘schedule later’ it actually sends later? Well, Ben’s one of the fellas that holds the fort down at Remind101. He’s a software engineer.

Remember the widget that just launched? He built it from scratch. More cool stuff to come.

Ben was born and raised in Northern California and went to the University of California, Santa Cruz.

When he’s not hacking, you can catch him working on his boat with his brothers.

Ben, we’re so excited to have you!

Thanks Mrs. Whitefield

Most people don’t know this, but I struggled in high school. A lot. I learned slower, I took tests separately from other students because I needed time.

Everyone has had a teacher that has created an impact on their life. Mrs. Whitefield changed mine (she keeps telling me to call her Denise but I just can’t!). She spent HOURS a day reviewing papers with me, ensuring I did the reading & being patient. Very very patient. It’s fair to say she was the reason I got into college. I learned slower. I read slower. But she was ok with that. I think I found a lot of confidence in her patience. “Keep trying, you’ll get it”.

Anytime I thank her for spending that time with me & tell her how much she impacted my life, she shrugs it off and say’s ” oh stop, you did it yourself!”

A sincere thanks to Mrs. Whitefield at Niles West High School!

New Feature Release: The Remind101 Widget

Last week we slyly launched our latest feature. The Remind101 widget!

What is it?

The Remind101 widget allows you to display recently sent Remind101 messages on your class website or blog. It’s extremely easy to install and, completely safe to use.

Step 1: Log into your account on any computer and go to “Account”, and “My Widget” in the upper right hand corner.

Step 2: On the next page you’ll see a preview of what your widget will look like when embedded on your blog. To get your embed code and add it to your site, click the blue “Create Widget” button.

Step 3: Highlight and copy the embeddable code on this page. That code is what you will use to add the widget to your class website or blog.

Step 4: Navigate to your class site or blog. Locate where your sites editable HTML code can be accessed. Every website is different.

Step 5: Decide where you would like your widget to be on your website, and find the corresponding code in your HTML view. Once you’ve found it, paste in the code for your widget and update the display.

You’ve now successfully installed your Remind101 widget!

We’re hoping the new Remind101 widget makes communication in your classroom just another small step easier.

Disclosure: The widget is a brand new release for us! So if you run into any bugs, or notice any glitches, let us know at contact@remind101.com

So excited about the widget you just can’t hide it? Help spread the word about our new widget on your social networks!

Thanks for making Remind101 a part of your classroom communication!

Teacher-family communication increases homework completion by 40%.

We’ve always believed that increased communication outside of class will foster a better work environment for students, and ultimately impact their success.

But a study conducted by Harvard Graduate students, Matthew Kraft and Shaun Dougherty, has now proven it.

By splitting middle and high school classes at a charter school in Massachusetts into treatment and control groups, Kraft and Dougherty were able to measure the differences phone calls and text messages home after school hours actually made.

They found that consistent communication with students and their families, outside the classroom, increases students participation in class, their homework completion rate, and their ability to remain on-task. Their results found that added communication:

Built stronger teacher-student relationships
Expanded parental involvement in students studies
Increased students motivation in school

Kraft and Dougherty specifically found that,

Teacher-family communication increased the odds that students completed their homework by 40%.
Decreased instances in which teachers had to redirect students attention to the task at hand by 25%,
Increased class participation rates by 15%”

In the teams interviews with the treatment group, they learned that teachers felt that calling and texting home, “foster(ed) a better rapport”, “heightened our relationship” with students, and “helped them to be more effective at classroom management and behavior modification.”

And that only skims the surface of what these graduate students found!

Studies such as this one will help Remind101 continue to pave the way in classroom communication tools.

We want to know if this information is valuable to you! Let us know on Twitter, Facebook or by emailing contact@remind101.com and we’ll gladly follow up this post with more of their findings.

We moved. Literally!

This week the Remind101 team moved into our new office space in the SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco. It’s fully equipped with lots of granola bars, sparkling water and gorgeous views. Check out our new thinking pad!

Teachers in, or visiting, San Francisco, our doors are always open to you!

If anyone would like to stop by the office we’d love to have you. Reach out to us on Facebook, Twitter or directly at contact@remind101.com.

How to use Remind101 in Elementary, Middle, and High School

This fall we decided to write a blog post on “The 10 ways to use Remind101.” Since that post, we continue to discover creative use cases that open up fantastic new possibilities.

It’s not unusual for me to stumble across a teacher using Remind101 in a new way. When that happens, I try my best to share their story on Facebook,Twitter or here on the blog.

One memorable recent message was this gem:

Teachers have found ways to implement Remind101 into every grade from K-12, and higher ed. As one would expect, we’ve recognized distinguishing difference in the ways Remind101 is used at each level.

I decided to delve a little deeper into what those differences were, and asked a few teachers to help me out by offering their story on how they use Remind101 in Elementary vs Middle vs High School.

Elementary:

Eric Carlson:

5th Grade
Northwinds Elementary
Buffalo, MN

Summary: Communication with parents/families. Bridging gap between school and home.

“I stumbled upon Remind101 a year ago and it has made communication with my fifth grade families a breeze! I use it to let parents know of upcoming tests and classroom/school news. I love how quickly and easily I can get word to parents. Parents love the texts and/or emails. It makes them feel more connected to classroom happenings.

The best feature is the scheduling of future messages. I can plan ahead and schedule a message to go out whenever I want. Want parents to know you have a test coming up but don’t want them to know too far in advance? Schedule the reminder to go out 2-3 days in advance. Slick! The possibilities are endless here!

I have a few 5th graders sign up for Remind 101 but for the most part it is my student’s parents. They appreciate the communication. It’s easy to sign up for and a great school-to-home communication tool.”

Todd Nesloney:

5th Grade Math, StuCo Advisor, & Tech Ninja
Fields Store Elementary
Waller, TX
You can read Todd’s blog at: http://nesloneyflipped.blogspot.com

Summary: Communicates with parents/families and students with phones. Keeping everyone informed, and on task, with due dates.

“I use Remind101 to remind my students and parents about upcoming field trips, homework that is due, and other school events. Because I do a “flipped Classroom” model they have to watch several instructional videos a week, and Remind101 really helps me with reminding students and parents what is due when. It is also a great way to quickly send out reminders about events. I don’t ever even access the Remind101 website, I do all my messages from the Remind101 app on my iPhone because it is just so easy to use! I also made sure to sign up for my own class reminders so that I could ensure messages were being delivered! That has really helped with the “well I never got a message” excuse.”

Elementary Takeways:

It is much more common to communicate with parents during these years as the students are less likely to have their own phone. Giving parents the “inside scoop” on what’s happening in their child’s classroom lets them be involved without being there. It fosters more parent involvement in their studies, and short quick messages on a regular basis make it less work for the teacher to keep families informed.

I also love hearing stories about Remind101 being used at this age to give parents tools to help teach at home. Teachers can send spelling words and reading lists to the parents, or trivia questions on what they did in class that day. It takes learning into the evening, and I love that.

Middle School:

Laura Fenger:

6th Grade Reading and Language Arts
You can read Laura’s blog at: www.mrsfenger.wordpress.com

Summary: Easiest communication method to notify parents about classroom work.

“As a 6th grade teacher, I use Remind101.com to send daily messages about homework to parents. The ability to text message parents makes a huge difference. Parents who don’t have access to email, often can receive text messages. I’ve had several parents tell me they really like getting my messages. Several other teachers in my school use it for this purpose, as well. Being able to communicate easily with parents makes my job easier.”

RDW, @tknologlvr:

Summary: Communicates with both students and parents/families about homework, scheduling adjustments and class announcemnts.

Middle School Takeaways:

Most middle school teachers communicate with both students and parents.
More students are getting their own phones now, but it’s still a good time to keep the parents involved in messages. It can give the parent a birds eye view of what their student is intended to accomplish, while the simultaneous communicate with students empowers them to feel like adults. Sharing messages directly with students gives them an opportunity to prove their own accomplishments…without Mom and Dad.

In middle school I also see trivia questions and motivational messages start to spur. Motivational messages are a particularly important aspect of communication. No child going through the difficult life adjustment that is puberty can hear, “you’re doing amazing, keep it up” enough.

High School:

Adalia Davis:

AP Human Geography
George Ranch High School
Richmond, Texas

Summary: Communicate directly with students as secondary measure to “writing assignments on the board,” routine changes, and reminders of what to bring to class that day. The option is open for parents to sign up as well, which many do.

“I use Remind101 to communicate primarily with students although most of my parents subscribe to the updates as well. At open house one parent after another told me how much the loved getting texts from me. They like to be “in the loop” of what’s going on in class. My students actually prefer to get text reminders via Remind101 rather than having them written on the board. Mostly I send out reminders about due dates and what supplies should be brought to class on a given day but recently I’ve utilized the system to alert my students about last minute changes in our routine (ex. meet in the computer lab instead of class).”

Tammy Neil:

Branford High School
Algebra 1/Honors, Intensive Math 6th & 7th
Branford, Florida

Summary: Use for classes and organizations. Both students and parents can opt into recieving messages. Send messages on many topics including homeowork, necessary supplies for days work and scheduling reminders.

“I found Remind101 on Pinterest this past summer. I have set up classes
for each of the preps I teach. I also sponsor two student organizations.
I provided both the students and the parents with the same group sign-up
information. I send all types of information. I try to send homework
reminders at a reasonable hour so parents can assist their students. I
also send reminders about club meetings, and school holidays. I’ve even
sent requests for supplies for my classroom. It has been a wonderful addition to my resources.”

High School Takeaways:

High School means cell phones are abundant (not like you need me to tell you that). Students are already texting like crazy. So communication via Remind101 has done something we didn’t expect, it’s bridged the teacher-student gap. Something about the communication via text actually makes students more comfortable with their teachers and more open to asking questions and getting involved.

Most high school teachers make parent sign ups optional at this level. We believe you should always give an enthusiastic parent appropriate access to their childs education. So I love to hear about high school parents still excited to get the messages.

Again, motivational messages, and texts including opportunities to learn after 3 pm (trivia, study tips, etc) are great at this age. You’re now getting into a good place where current events and historical dates can be learning moments, and Remind101 is a great way to foster that.

If you have a story about how you’ve been using Remind101, I’d love to hear from you! Reach out to us at contact@remind101.com, on Facebook or onTwitter and tell us all about it.

Christine Garland is the Marketing Engineer at Remind101, you can tweet her @cagarland