Educational Texting?

My wife and I have four kids ranging in age from 16  to 24, and as of a month ago we now all have cell phones with unlimited texting. When I helped them set up their accounts, they made it pretty clear that while a reasonable number of minutes of call time were important, the most important thing in their world was to have unlimited texting. Out of curiosity,  I looked over the last three statements for one of my kids and found that on average over 2000 text message were sent each month. I did the math, and on old plans without unlimited texting where they were charging 15 cents a text, that would have cost us $300 a month in text charges alone! And for the record, as a family we are not constantly messaging and we do have real face-to-face conversations without electronic devices being used.

For me, more and more I am using texts to communicate with my brothers, my sister-in-laws and even my nieces and nephews. Texting is one of the main ways that more and more people I know are staying in touch with each other and their friends. For many, an e-mail account is still important but by far a secondary way to communicate quickly electronically.

So what is the point of all this? At LEC we offer courses to students mostly over the age of 16, many of whom are using texting as a main way to stay connected. For a while now I have been curious about how we could use texting to allow individual teachers and us as a school to better stay in touch with students and parents, but hadn't come across a system that would allow personal information (such as teacher's, student's and parent's cell numbers) to remain private. Maintaining clear boundaries of what is appropriate is critical.

Check it out at remind101.com

Which is why it intrigued me when I saw a link referring to a text messaging system (remind101.com) designed especially to allow teachers or schools to communicate with students and parents. The good part about the system is that a teacher or school can set up the "class" and it doesn't involve them having to use their personal cell phone number. The other part of it is that students or parents subscribe to the "class" by texting from their phone or by using their e-mail, and they don't have to share their cell phone number to do it.

The other nice thing about the system is the low maintenance involved. Students and parents manage their own subscription to the list by following simple instructions to join and sending a simple 'stop' message if they no longer need to be on the list. That's it.

I don't know if we will end up using the system or not, and there are questions I need to answer about how texting charges work from their service in the US to Canadian cell phones, even if people have 'unlimited' text plans. But overall the concept looks promising and I'll give an update as we try it out here at LEC with a test group. Click on "comments" below to add your thoughts and whether you think this might work.