Parents crave communication and engagement with their kids’ teachers.  They want to know what’s going on. But crazy busy work and packed extracurricular schedules make communication a challenge.  As educators we need a safe, private and efficient way to send the occasional update and reminder to our most important stakeholders.

Remind (formerly Remind 101), a popular free app, allows educators to safely connect with students, parents, club and team participants with quick one-way text reminders of assignments, meetings, updates, announcements (like weather cancellations), and perhaps motivational messages.  No phone numbers are exchanged.

The app/website just announced a Chat opt-in, allowing one-to-one communication with a student or parent in one of their classes, clubs or teams.  This may be the perfect non-intrusive strategy for personalizing communication with a kid who is under the weather, clarifying project details, sharing directions to the other team’s field, offering a little individual support or feedback, offering differentiation for special needs learners.  It’s also a good strategy for demonstrating chat norms for a professional or academic setting.  Chat may be an especially helpful tool for personalized feedback in the 1:1 classroom.

5.0+ versions of the app display a new (+sign) Chat icon that enables educators to initiate Chat with subscribers over the age of 13 (a label is displayed identifying a user as under 13.)

Remind is device agnostic. Subscribers may connect either in the app, by text or by email.

Users may search for students or parents in their Subscriber List. Underneath each name, is a list of classes joined. If a name is grayed out, he or she is unavailable to chat.