Currently, our communication process consists of two parts: 1) the main office sends out monthly, weekly, and special event calendars to parents and 2) our teaching team posts a daily message on the easel, sends home a monthly calendar newsletter on paper, sends a weekly email with updates or reminders, and sends the occasional email directed to individual parents that need additional reminders and/or responses to questions and concerns. The calendar newsletter is the catch-all. It includes a lot of detailed information for the month including units of study, student needs, snack schedules, and special events. For obvious reasons, creating this combination of paper copies, emails, and individual responses is time consuming and can occasionally cause problems. "Sarah didn't bring a newsletter home this month!" "I must have deleted that email, can you resend it?"
After investigating and trying out the Remind application, I conclude that Remind can be beneficial for our communication with those outside the classroom.
Remind gives the user the ability to send messages, to groups or individuals, and has the capability to open up the message into a conversation. In an ideal world, this capability appeals to me the most, but I suspect it would be frowned upon by the administration due to the legitimate risk of parents posting negative comments or criticism in a (now) public forum.
Yet for arguments sake, I'm going to pretend that the conversation capability is allowed in my classroom. Once the conversation capability is enabled, parents can reply to a message or reminder with questions. Once I reply to that questions, the answer is out for all parents to view in the conversation. I will no longer need to respond to ten individual emails answering the same question. For instance, if I send a reminder that there is an early release on Thursday (keeping in mind that this is a reminder - parents were already notified prior via the main office calendar and our monthly newsletter) and a parent responds with a question, I can convey that information quickly and easily. "Do I need to send a lunch with my child?" My affirmative response will reach the other parents instantaneously. They (and I) will no longer need to open up numerous emails to follow the thread trail of questions and answers. This is applicable and extremely helpful for our History Share events, performances, Show-and-Tell days, Special Visitor days, field trips, etc. etc.
Remind also has the capability to list one's office hours, to restrict the conversation when necessary, and to archive past announcements, so teachers and parents can look back for information when needed.
This application is user-friendly and straightforward. Perfect for tech-amateurs like me.
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