Steve Dotto here.
Thanks for spending time with me today.
Today our productivity video is going to be a little more vertical-focused than normal.
I'm focusing on the education market because it is back-to-school time, that great time
of the year when kids are heading back to school and the world of opportunity lies before
them.
Now the tool that I'm going to show you today is a communication tool that allows teachers
to text students or to email students or their parents and remind of assignments or things
that are going to be required for class.
Now on the surface you think oh my gosh, teachers should not be texting students because they
should not be sharing personal information.
They shouldn't have each other's phone number.
And parents certainly shouldn't have teachers' mobile phone numbers where they can harass
them or do anything else.
So there has to be this line.
We need this privacy line that should not be crossed.
That is true.
We should not be doing it but here's the bottom line: texting is a great tool for this sort
of communication.
Studies have proven that students who get texted or get sent a text to remind them of
assignments complete a much higher percentage of their homework so it's good for education.
So how do we handle this?
Enter the folks that Remind 101.
What a great concept and solution they've come up with, and it's free.
Here's what happens.
I've signed up.
Let me just walk you through it and show you what happens.
Basically, it anonymizes the texting going back and forth and allows me to send group
texts to a class.
I've set it up as though I'm a teacher and actually look, they call me Mr. Dotto.
I like that.
I'm pretending I teach Math 10.
So I've signed up for free.
It was a very quick registration process and now I'm kind of in the enrollment process,
setting it up.
So what's going to happen is I'm going to send a text to the number that they have here.
Let me call up my phone and let me put in that number.
It is 604-227-2039.
Then in my message, I am supposed to send @math10BL.
I'm going to go send, it sent the text to that address, and now we go back to the website
and it says I've, "Got it!
Please reply with your name."
Go back to my phone.
Here it is.
This is the text that just came in, "Thanks!
Mr. Dotto needs to know who you are before adding you to @math10bl.
Please reply with your full name."
I'm just going to put in Steve, Steve D, and I'm going to go and send.
Got it.
Please reply with your name.
Okay.
"Send yourself a sample message."
Now using the web interface here, I can send a message to the entire class that's registered
for this page completely anonymously.
So I'm going to say, "Do your homework, be smart, Mr. Dotto rules."
Okay Send.
I've sent it out.
Now let's go back to my phone and let's take a look and there it is.
From, "Mr. Dotto: Do your homework, be smart, Mr. Dotto rules."
So that way there we can send text messages back and forth.
Now there's an app that installs on the phone but look at what the web interface alone does.
It has just some very simple functions for adding new classes so you can set this up
individually for each of the classes that you teach.
I think you could also use this beyond just pure educational environment.
You could be using this for workshops, for texting people in workshops, and keeping privacy
and all that sort of stuff in other areas but primarily in the K-12 school system, this
is going to be tremendous.
They've got a little bit of proselytizing here, introducing it to fellow teachers, which
would be a great idea.
I've got to tell you, as you can tell, I'm pretty excited about this product.
Over here we have the Subscribers list.
This shows you all of the people who are subscribed, all of the people who are subscribed to my
list.
So if I was a teacher, I would probably set up a Math 10 Block C student list and then
I'd set up a Math 10 Block C parents list so that I could also communicate with the
parents back and forth.
They can also then text me at any time and the texts appear in my interface here as well.
Also, couple of other notes, this works on all phones that handle texting, not just smartphones.
It works on all phones that handle texting.
If people want they can also opt in and use this as email instead of texting if they don't
have a texting enabled phone.
They've got a nice little set of instructions here on how people subscribe your class so
you can give this to your students and have them enter it so that they can very easily
register.
On your first day of class, on the first day of school, this would be just a graphic that
I would put up, share it with my students, and then you can have your entire students
able to be texted at any time.
Is this outstanding?
I think this is outstanding.
I hope you found today's video to be useful.
Please share it with other parents, share it with teachers, share it with any principals
you know or administrators in the school system.
This is a tool that teachers will be thrilled to use.
It would make the students' lives better.
It will help kids stay on tasks a little more effectively.
It's really a win-win-win-win situation.
Thank you very much folks at Remind101.
I hope you found this video to be useful.
If you have, please give us a Like and also subscribe to our channel here on YouTube.
I certainly appreciate you spending time with me today.
I'm Steve Dotto.
We'll see you next week.
[END OF VIDEO Terrific Teachers App - Text Students with Privacy (2) 5:56]