QUICK KEYS AND TIPS By Andy Mann Effectively Moving the Message
Okay, so you have a goal to improve communication with your students and their parents, but with all the options available, how do you select the most appropriate tool? Hopefully, the information below will provide some options – including a few you may not have considered.
Unlike adults, many students no longer use email. They live on their smart phones, through social media, and text messaging. Begin by surveying your students in your quest to select the most appropriate mode of communication. The average Facebook user spends nearly an hour a day on his Facebook site. If your students are Facebook users, create a separate “teacher” Facebook account, and create a Facebook page or Facebook group. For tips and examples, visit this wiki page:
http://bit.ly/facebookclassroom. Take a close look at the wealth of examples and the parent permission form from Erin Schoening, a 1st
grade teacher from Council Bluff Schools, Iowa.
Consider communicating to students through text messaging. Texting students from a teacher’s personal cell phone can put a teacher at risk of more than just miscommunication. Because of this, here are some alternatives to send text messages to your students. My favorite texting resource is the free Remind 1011
.
Students and their parents can “subscribe” to a class to receive information via text, email, or both. Your messages are sent via a web interface or using the free Remind101 app. It’s an opt-in service, with phone numbers and email addresses kept confidential. It’s a great tool for communicating important class information or reminders.
Another text-based alternative is to use the email-to-text option available through cell phone carriers. For example, to send an email-to-text to a Verizon cell phone, use the cell phone’s 10 digit phone number, followed by @
vtext.com, e.g.,
2315551212@vtext.com. A comprehensive listing of cell phone carriers’ email-to-text addresses can be found at www.
emailtextmessages.com. Create an email group with students’ email-to-text addresses, and email reminders to this group and they receive the reminders as text messages. Note: similar to Remind 101, this is one-way communications.
Most students have smart phones, and these phones can do a better job of following teacher information posted to Twitter. A popular model is for a teacher to create a specific Twitter account for a particular classroom or to use a unique hash tag for a class. You might check out the blog post, “13 Ways Twitter Improves Education2
using Twitter often include an embedded Twitter widget3
,” for other ideas about using Twitter. Those into
their online course or blog. Widgets can be customized to display a running timeline of tweets for a specific twitter account, tweets with a specific #hashtag, or other information.
For blog-using teachers, consider tools that push the information out to users. For example, add the Word Press Twitter plugin4
to
auto-tweet updates from a blog post. Plugins like Subscribe 25 allow users to subscribe to a blog so they receive an email each time there is a new blog post. While Subscribe 2 might be ideal for parents who still read emails, the WordPress Text Message6 plugin, which sends out a text message for each blog post, is more ideal for texting to student phones. Not a Word Press user, Blogger users will find some of these widgets built into the different theme, or they can quickly find them online from posts such as 29 Blogger Widgets and Plugins7
.
Teachers must adopt new communication strategies to connect with their students. Try some of the new methods to communicate with your students - be it Twitter, Facebook, blogging, or text messaging. Students appreciate being reminded about homework or upcoming assignments. In order to do this effectively, teachers must first identify the most effective tool, or tools to communicate with their students and parents. I encourage you to take a risk and try something new.
Reference links: 1
Remind 101,
http://remind101.com 213 Ways Twitter Improves Education, http://askatechteacher.wordpress.
com/2012/03/22/13-ways-twitter-improves-education/ 3
Embedding Twitter widgets,
https://twitter.com/settings/widgets
4WordPress Twitter plugin,
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-to-twitter/ 5WordPress Subscribe 2 plugin,
http://subscribe2.wordpress.com/
6WordPress Text Message plugin,
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-
text-message/ 7
29 Blogger Widgets and Plugins.
http://www.mintblogger.com/2009/01/30- blogger-widgets-and-plugins.html
Andy Mann is the Director, REMC 4 and Instructional Technology Consultant for the Muskegon Area Intermediate School District.
MACULJOURNAL
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Winter 2013
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13
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