Text Messaging Your Students!

There.  That title should get your attention.  In my last post I promised to review ClassParrot, however, I’m going to break my promise.  ClassParrot couldn’t find a business model that worked and went out of business.  But, their idea was that teachers could increase communication with students and parents through safe and secure texting and I believe they are right on the money about that—well maybe not “money”—how about they were on the “mark”.  ClassParrot would give teachers a certain number of text messages per month, for free, and then charge teachers who wanted unlimited texting.  Perhaps that didn’t work for them because a number of other sites are willing to provide unlimited texting for free.  So, allow me to review three of those sites instead.  Even after going out of business, the ClassParrot site still provides this bit of information—only 22% of Emails get opened, whereas 98% of text messages get opened—now which would you say is a better way to reach students?

 

Here is a quote from a blog by Anna Otto (which you can read in its entirety here):

There are several web-based texting sites that allow you to text students while avoiding the legal risk of exchanging personal contact information with them. You won’t know your students’ cell phone numbers, and they won’t know yours. All of these types of sites let you send messages through their website, some also let you text straight from your phone. They’re great if you’d like to help students remember to study for an upcoming test, remind them to bring in certain supplies, let them know about date and time changes for club/athletic events, and more!

 

Not only am I too cheap to have a smart phone, but, believe it or not, I have texting blocked on my feature phone—I mean I am really a skin flint.  So, perhaps I’m not the best one to be doing this review.  But, here goes….

 

Celly (http://cel.ly/) – as in cell — a cell could be your first block Biology Class, the athletes on a football team, a study group, or the kids going on a particular field trip.  Celly seems to be a wonderful vehicle for organizing protests—it has been used a lot by the occupy Wall Street movement.  I’m not sure how it works or looks on a phone, but, if students go to the Celly website they’ll find they have opportunity to open their own cells or to join up or drop in on hundreds of other cells—not just Occupy Wall Street, but lots of Occupy sites seem  to show up.  This makes the point that you can set up as many cells (or classes) as you like.  You can join Celly and set up cells either on your computer or on your phone—oh, they also have an Android App (no iPad app at this point.)  The easiest way to have students join your cell is to have them send the text “join” to the group and enter the correct code.  You can set up cells: 1) that anyone can join, or 2) anyone who provides a description of themselves of which you approve, or 3) only those who know the password can join.   Once they are in, you do not see their phone number and they do not see yours. 

 

You can then send out group texts from your computer for free.  On your phone, standard text messaging rates apply—but a group text counts as just one text. 

 

Being the cell administrator gives you several options.  You can set things up so:  1) you can text the students but, they cannot reply, or 2) so that they can reply, or 3) so that students also may send out texts to the whole group, or 4) so that students can send out texts “curated” by you to the whole group (meaning if it makes it past your one teacher censorship board it is sent to the group – similar to moderating a blog).  If a student replies to a text with a question, the teacher can then answer that question privately.   Standard messaging rates apply for the students, so you might want to get parental permission for this one.  For those students who may be as frugal as I am and therefore, don’t have texting, replies can also be made through Email. 

 

Of the sites I’m reviewing today, this is the only one where a student can respond to a multiple choice poll and have the answers appear on your website—to be projected on a screen—no, wait, we can’t do that in school—but, the capacity is there.   To assure that your students get plenty of sleep you can shut down the reply capability every night at bedtime.  Celly also allows you to add “hashtags” to texts so that they can be easily filtered and sorted.  Finally, with Celly you can create messages and schedule them to be sent later.

 

Remind 101 (https://www.remind101.com/).  This site is supposed to be the elegantly simple one, and in many ways it is.  You add a class and it creates joining instructions in PDF format which can immediately be printed and distributed.  However, I tried to join a group I created via Email (to see how it worked) and Thunderbird told me my message was not deliverable.   Furthermore, when I tried to schedule a message to be delivered later—something didn’t pop up on my screen allowing me to do so.   To sign up via Email, one needs an Email address.  Remind 101 does have an iPhone/iPad app.

 

Class Pager (https://www.classpager.com/) – this looks and acts a lot like Remind 101—I don’t know which came first, but, one of them obviously viewed the other’s site.  The advantages of Class Pager over Remind—you can set up polls (but not multiple choice ones) and you can respond to students individually.  The disadvantages are that you can only set up one class for free—their business model charges $10/month per additional class and students can’t join via Email—they must have texting to join.

 

In conclusion, if I were to select one of them, it would be Celly.  I’ll grant you it is not as simple to use as the others; however, it seems to work best with my machine, with our filters, and with my restrictions (no Smart phone, etc.)  Now, would I really use it in a classroom?  As a coach or sponsor of an extracurricular activity, I’d definitely use it—after clearing it with my principal first.  As a classroom teacher, I think I’d give it a try, restrict its use to very limited occasions, and see how the students and parents react.  If communication with parents and students is key to classroom success, how can it hurt to try it out?