Connecting and Staying In Touch With Remind101 and Our School Community!

Over the last few months I have been hearing and reading a lot about Remind101.  With this website and app, teachers can text messages to students, parents, and others who want to be informed and stay in touch.  

There are already several ways that I connect with our school community and others with news and happenings from our library. 

I have the Van Meter Voice Facebook page and on Twitter you can find us at @vmlibraryvoice.  I post photographs, videos, projects, news of our guest authors and illustrators Skype's, special news from our "Technical Difficulties" and "Mind Craft" after school groups, new digital tools and apps to try, and so much more.  

I create the Van Meter Library Voice Monthly using Smore which I share through Facebook, Twitter, and emails.  I have a Diigo Group for our library to share resources and links.  I also use Instagram and Foursquare to connect with our community, especially the students.  

With Remind101, I think I can get this information to even more people.....An easy, powerful, and fun way to connect our school community to all of the wonderful learning, creating, collaboration, and noise that takes place every single day.  

Today I set up "Classes" for each of my elementary library and technology classes.  I set up one for the Van Meter Staff and Van Meter National Honor Society, which I sponsor.  It is very simple to set up your classes with a Class Name and Class Code.      

                         

I also created one that I will be sharing with everyone.....Van Meter Library Voice Remind101. Anyone, not just people from the Van Meter school community, can join this Remind101 Class.  

It is one more way that we can take down the walls and connect our library to the world.  

Once you have created a Class in Remind101, you can see each on its own screen where it gives you information about that specific class.  As people start subscribing to the class, each individual will show up under "Subscribers".  This is where you manage these people as well.  

It gives you the option to "View" or "Print".  This makes it very easy to have people subscribe to your class because they will have the information they need.  

                             

If you select Print, it gives you this nice page just like the one above.  It can be copied to hand out or a put onto a blog, wiki, or website for others to see. 

In the app, I also love how it gives you this screen with each class you have set up.  I went to the Van Meter Library Voice class, selected "How To Join" at the bottom of the screen, and it gave me this screen with the information that I needed.

During back-to-school open house with our families and during the first days of school, I will help our school community add the Remind101 app to their devices and get signed up for the Classes that they would like to receive information about.

This is one more way we can all connect to our students, teachers, and library every day.

And not just to the library, but to our school and other teachers as well.  When I was writing this post, our elementary P.E. teacher Bart Jones sent me a tweet saying he wanted to use Remind101 too.  I am so excited that Bart wants to use Remind101 and I know others will want to as well.

Thank you Remind101 for bringing us one more way to come together and connect.

And please join the Van Meter Library Voice Remind101 to connect with us too.