Keeping Kids in the Know

High schoolers, I have found, are extremely forgetful.  It never failed that I would tell the students something would be due or that they would have a test not only at the beginning of the unit, but almost every day until the day it was due, but there would always be a handful of students who were like:

Find It Here

To try and alleviate some of the headache that comes with convincing students that you did, in fact, remind them of a particular due date the day before (and months before), I started using Remind101 last year.

The students must sign up for it on their cell phones (so can parents) in order for it to work, but the program will send text message reminders to students on the teacher's behalf.  The students never see the teacher's number (THANK GOODNESS) and the teacher never sees students' numbers (because we wouldn't want a lawsuit).  Last year I found out that if I used my computer instead of the app on my phone, I could pre-set reminders to be sent to my students.  This worked out much better than me remembering over a weekend to remind my students of a big paper due on Monday.  Yeah, there were times that kind of a reminder didn't get sent until Sunday night.  That didn't help anybody....except maybe some of the major procrastinators.

I want to use the program in my classes a lot more this year.  Some of my students complained that I only used it for the more major projects.  They said it would be helpful for all the homework.  Since it's easy enough to use, I don't see why I can't do that for them.

Another problem I came across last year was getting my students to sign up.  In one of my semester classes, only three students signed up.  THREE.  It felt pointless to send out reminders to that class.  I'm thinking that for next year, I will have my students sign up for the reminders while they are still IN CLASS.  I know, I know, it's taboo to let the kids get out their phones in class, but I'm also thinking of using this program in my classroom too.  And I'm debating on giving a negligible amount of bonus points to the students who do sign up for the reminders.  But then again, I truly hate extra credit.  I really, really do.  I'll have to post my why for that at another time!  

Remind101 is kind of genius.  Too bad I didn't come up with the idea myself.