Abigail Workman

EDET 620
09/19/2021

REMIND
Remind is an instant messaging tool that connects teachers, students, and parents. While its primary use
is to send out class reminders about due dates or schedule changes, creative teachers can utilize it for so
much more.

My future class will be a high school Geometry class. Here is a screenshot of my class in REMIND. So far,
the only student who has accepted the invitation to join the class is Dr. Sherman.

Here is an example of a message I could send to my class:

 Abigail Workman
EDET 620
09/19/2021
Questions about REMIND:

1. How might you personally use a tool like REMIND as a teacher? Be specific.

If I were to use REMIND, I would set up a group chat where students can ask questions and receive
feedback from me and from other students. I would also send out reminders about tests, deadlines, or
schedule changes.

2. What are some of the reasons why you think a tool like REMIND is better or worse than using
standard email and texting?

Remind is better than using standard email, because often students do not check their email. Texting
them reaches them where they are at. Plus, Remind keeps the phone numbers of all parties private.

However, Remind can also be worse than using standard email because of its character limit and
informal nature. In general, texting is a medium geared toward talking with friends and family. Email is
geared toward work and school. Thus, confounding the two mediums by texting school information can
seem like an intrusion into a student’s personal life.

3. How might a tool like REMIND help support community-building? Specifically, describe how a tool
like REMIND could be used to support the four dimensions of community-building* detailed by
McMillan & Chavis (1986):

The whole purpose of REMIND is to facilitate communication between teachers, students, and parents.
Thus it can be a powerful tool for building community. Here is how this tool can be used to address the
four aspects of community-building:

Membership – Students choose to opt into the REMIND group. Remind has a group-messaging feature,
meaning that the students and teacher can all communicate together and share questions and
feedback. This corresponds to the assertion of McMillian & Chavis (1986) that “the boundaries [of a
group] provide members with the emotional safety necessary for needs and feelings to be exposed and
for intimacy to develop” (p. 9). I know from personal experience that when a group chat is created for a
class, a sense of community and common struggle is developed as students share their questions and
frustrations, and as help is offered and solutions are reached.

Influence – One aspect of influence is that it gets the members of the group to conform. Reminders
about test and assignment dates send the message that these are important events to the group, and
that all the members should spend time preparing for them. This is an act of conformity to the belief
that studying and doing well in the class is important.

Integration & Fulfillment of Needs – The primary need that is being addressed by a REMIND group chat
is the need for information that will reward the student in the form of success in the class. This
information could come directly from the teacher, or also from the other students who aid struggling
peers. In any case, everyone is benefiting from engaging with the material and being reminded of what
will be due soon.

Shared emotional connections – Keeping the chat active and positive will strengthen the shared
emotional connection of the members. This is because the “contact hypothesis” states that the more
often people interact, the more likely they are to form a close bond (McMillian & Chavis, 1986). The
 Abigail Workman
EDET 620
09/19/2021
interactions must be free of bullying and competition, which could make some members feel left out or
not valuable to the group.

4. How does the Remind tool accommodate students whose parents may not have a smart phone?

REMIND will convert app messages into text messages that are sent to any phone with texting
capabilities. Thus, members do not have to have a smartphone. Also, messages can be simply emailed to
the parent instead of texted.

5. Why might you use an app like Remind in your teaching? If you don't think you would use such a
tool, why not?

I see why teachers would want to use REMIND. It can help bridge the communication gap between
teachers and students, to create more of a sense of community. However, I would not personally use a
tool like REMIND to text my students when I become a teacher.

When I was in high school, our teachers used REMIND quite often to remind us of tests and assignment
deadlines. However, that information was clearly conveyed in class several times, and so the “reminder”
was not necessary. I never saw a student sincerely forget that there was a test the next day, receive the
reminder, be immensely grateful, and then study hard for the test. The students who study usually
remember the test date, and the students who forget are the ones who were not going to study
anyway.

The way I see it, you have two options as a teacher for how to use REMIND:

1) Message the whole class, which would only apply to general assignments and deadlines. As I said, I
feel this is unnecessary.

2) Message individual students or receive individual messages from them. To me this is just a landmine
of things that could go wrong. I would NEVER want to be in a one-on-one conversation with student
over text, where messages could be misunderstood, or students could bring up topics that would not be
appropriate.

People don’t have the same boundaries over text as they do in person, and that power imbalance
between a teacher and a student can make students feel uncomfortable or vulnerable. If they don’t like
the fact that their teacher is texting them, they might not say so because they don’t want to face
retaliation or jeopardize their grades.

Plus, as a parent, I would not feel comfortable with my child texting their teacher when I don’t know
what they are saying. The teacher should convey a message to the parent directly by calling them or
emailing them. Then the parent can relay the message to their child.

Also, once the school day is over, teachers need to rest and start preparing for the next school day. I
don’t want to add to what is an already heavy workload by promising to be available for student
questions after school hours.