Remind: School Communication Hack 14.21.1 + Redeem Codes

Being able to text people in a class or small groups is amazing and very helpful. However finding individual texts is very difficult to do...there’s no way to sort or organize msgs and if you receive images or attachments from members (students) they are also extremely difficult to find after several threads. You’d have to download or copy the attached picture right away because if you miss it or if you don’t do it immediately then you might as well forget it. The new features to attach files from different platforms is amazing but if you can’t receive msgs in a way that’s easy to organize, you might as well stick to email for more classroom related tasks like assignments and schoolwork communication. If it’s being presented as a tool for constant communication in an educational context it would be most helpful to sort msgs or find attachments somehow in a way that’s efficient and organized. It’s also difficult to find contacts when parents and students are not separated or filed easily, especially using it in the primary grades where the main contact or only contact is with a parent (you still need to know who’s parent they are) and adding that to the “notes” is not the best option.

When I returned to teaching in the fall of 2018, I knew some teachers were using Remind but I did not see what the big deal was. Mr. Covid has made it very clear to me what the big deal with Remind is.
Remind gives a teacher the convenient, easy, and quick way to communicate with his/her students, either individually or as a class. Remind also gives each student the same option to communicate with his/her teacher.
If a student has a problem or issue that s/he does not want to share in front of the entire class, Remind is the perfect vehicle for that student-teacher communication, especially if the teacher has his/her phone out and available while teaching - as I now do.
Why not just use the school's email system? Simply because many students now do not check their emails frequently. They use phone aps to send and receive messages. I know now that Remind is a terrific phone ap for useful and needed teacher-student conversations.
I am now a true believer in the power of Remind and will be making extensive use of this ap in the fall when my school district returns to in-person instruction. I strongly recommend all other teachers do likewise.

It’s fine to receive basic reminders.
We use for school admin to parent or teacher to parent and Vice versa communication. The free version has very low character limit (140) so it’s hard to fit even basic info-so then it’s a reminder and see attachment. Which you can only attach one picture or file. So that means sending several messages which leads to over notifications, which then parents are bothered. (There are plans available for higher character around 500 is the one my school finally switched to. This is very helpful. Idk the cost on the administration side, but I appreciate it both as a teacher and parent.)
On the parent side if you have receive notifications turned on then it’s really like two notifications because you get the notification and view it. But then you still have to open the app and view in the app for it to be marked read, otherwise it still looks like you have a new message. Also if several attachments were sent in a row you have to open each one separately. So it’s small inconvenience but adds up.
I do like how you can individual message within groups so it’s a way for parents to connect without sharing numbers. And you can individual connect with a teacher. But each teacher had to make their own group.
Overall it functions for its basic purpose to send a brief reminder to a group of people who have signed up-but that’s the key-very basic.

This is the first app I’ve ever reviewed! But I have to say how this app has been so amazing for our family! My 5 year old son has autism and receives a lot of special services including seeing numerous teachers and therapists at school. Before this app I was never able to keep up with all the emails, found it impossible to go through everything and respond to everyone in a timely manner. Once his school started using Remind, all the important communications, the stuff directly from his teachers regarding things in his specific care, now had their very own home on my phone, and the unique style alerts easily combined to separate these important messages from the noise of my constantly roaring email inbox! With this app I have been able to GREATLY improve my communications with my son’s teachers and therapists at school and it allows so much better cross communication between the entire group on his team as well! I think every school should be using this app. Teachers, get your classroom on here! Parents, send Remind invites to your children’s teachers! I love this app so much and hope to see it used everywhere soon!

I’ve heard and read so many great reviews for this app, including from my colleagues so I after two terms of hearing about it, I finally decided to try it. Lucky me! 😒 I’m not sure what I did wrong but within seconds, it has already been a fail. I’ve tried uninstalling and installing and was still a total fail.

After setting up my classroom, I went to enter some contacts and it got stuck at asking me what I wanted people to call me, which I had already done in the initial setup. Already strange that it was asking me this again. I typed my name again, and chose “Ms” for the title; then hit next. First it changed what I entered and added an “M.” in front of my name and no title. It then would not advance to the next screen. I repeatedly hit next and it just kept repeating the same screen name question. I even uninstalled and when I installed again; it eerily would reload and show the last screen from before I uninstalled it - still asking me what name. A major glitch to be sure. It just kept blipping “What do you want students to call you?” Call me baffled and disappointed.

First, I signed up using the text option provided by my daughter’s school. Second, I downloaded the app and chose to sign in using my google account, rather than creating “another” user account on someone else’s servers. I finished the verification process and and found the account I had just created via text message. I was prompted to merge and I accepted. I received an email saying my accounts were merged so I assumed the app was just a stuck. Third, merging was stuck for over 10 minutes so I removed and downloaded the app again. When I got to the main page it had already pre-populated my email address in the email field. Assuming the app was smart enough to use Google SSO, as I had previously indicated, I clicked the next button. Now it’s trying to create me another account on remind servers. So basically no SSO. And, I’m stuck on the page that wants me to choose a password! I don’t want to choose a password! I want to go back and sign in with the Google account like I indicated in the first place. But now the app won’t let me go anywhere until I enter a password. I’ve deleted the app. I’ve deleted the app and app data, but it appears to be keeping track of where I was in the app. Clearly it’s storing something where I cannot delete it. Now I have no idea how to use this app. It’s stuck and I have no recourse.

I really enjoy this app, it’s great for parents of younger children that are in school - I get text updates all the time from my boys’ teacher’s, one kid goes to after school care and his program director keeps in touch and sends pertinent updates through it, if they rode the bus (I drive them and pick them up) I would be able to communicate with the bus driver through the app, and even the school principal sends out announcements from the app - announcements that I’m sure are told to the students but by the time they get home they’ve forgotten about and never tell us, so we’re able to keep up to date on things like book fairs, student award ceremonies, dances, dress up days, reward days (Kona Ice comes to the school monthly), etc… it’s just a really beneficial tool to keep up with my children’s different school activities, projects, behaviors, etc. I am someone who does more texting than calling, I absolutely HATEEE talking on the phone for some reason, so it’s great that it’s a text app to keep us informed - but it also makes call for those who aren’t really into texting. It’s a very useful tool to have.

This app is apparently too hard for some teachers to set up. I sent a message to my child’s teacher at about 9:45 pm one evening and the message wasn’t received by the teacher until around 3 am when it woke her up because she had her am/pm switched around in her available hours and had it programmed mistakenly to go to her personal cell phone. When I arrived at the school the next morning to drop off my children I was met at the car/curb by two administrators who demanded that I meet them across campus at an admin office where I was accused of hacking into a teachers personal life and obtaining her cell phone number!! Luckily I was able to prove that I sent the message at around 9:45 pm vs the reported 3 am by showing them the app and the message to clear myself. However, this resulted in the teacher getting embarrassed &/or still not trusting me and she didn't think she could continue being my child’s teacher. So, my son was transferred to a different teacher where he went through an entire school year being constantly abused verbally and physically. Now 2 years later, the teacher who was too stupid to understand how to properly set up her app is now my child’s teacher again and even though I refuse to use the remind app to communicate with her she has created a new nightmare for my child this year!!!

I love this app. The only reason I am not giving it 5 stars is because I think you should be able to send longer messages. I often have to send 3 messages to relay the week’s reminders, which is annoying to me and the parents. Also, I have to keep a parent contact log and I wish there was a way to sort the dates of messages sent directly to the parents that aren’t whole class messages. I have to go into each parent and do them one by one and it takes forever- so a sort drop down menu filter would be nice.

What’s great? The fact you can go back and look at old messages. I actually had a parent try to sue our school because she said her child slipped on the bathroom floor and lost a permanent tooth. On the day her daughter was playing with the sink water, she did slip and lose a tooth, but her mom texted me through remind and said, “ thank goodness the doctors said it was a baby tooth, her permanent one is getting close to coming in.” Lawsuit saved! I also like that it lets you attach pics. I often take pics of school flyers or homework sheets and send.

Really helpful way to keep in contact with teachers or classes. However, there are a few kinks to still work through.
I cannot message a teacher without having received a message from them first. I don’t understand why I can message anyone in the class except for the teacher.
There has got to be a better way to organize classes. More customization within the app would be very helpful. For example, being able to organize the list of classes or teachers in any order, or in alphabetical order or put them in groups. Another helpful tool would be a way to mark something as important or put it in a to do list. It’s great to have these reminders, but once you read it there is not a way to set it aside to remember where it is later if it isn’t something that can be done right away.
Lastly, I hate getting text messages as well. What is the point of the app if I get a text anyway. I disabled this in the app, but made the mistake of accepting a class through a text and began receiving the texts again. I unsubscribed, again mistakenly through text, and that ended my ability to send a message to the teacher even through the remind app.