Showing posts with label student reminders. Show all posts
Showing posts with label student reminders. Show all posts

Thursday, August 6, 2015

WhatsDue Gets a Refresh for the New School Year

WhatsDue is a free service for sending due date reminders to students. The service sends push notifications to students' iOS and Android devices. I reviewed the service last spring and thought that it was good as it doesn't rely on SMS/ text messaging. Just in time for the new school year WhatsDue released some updates.

There are three noticeable updates to WhatsDue on the administrative side of things. First, you can now define the type of assignment (homework, quiz, project, or custom description) and add a description to it. Second, the due date now defaults to "tomorrow" unless you change it. Third, you no longer have to specify a time for each assignment's due date. Instead of having to specify "August 14 at 9am" you can now just leave it as "August 14."

Here's how WhatsDue works. First, the teacher registers for a free account on the WhatsDue website and creates a class or classes. Each class is assigned its own unique join code. Teachers then invite students and parents to join the class through the join code. Once students have joined the class they will begin receiving due date reminders on their mobile devices.

Teachers can create multiple classes and schedule multiple reminders for each class from one dashboard on the WhatsDue website. Students opening WhatsDue on their iPhones or Android phones will see reminders of approaching due dates and past due dates.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

ClassDojo Launches a Messaging Service to Help Teachers Keep Parents Informed

ClassDojo, a popular student behavior recording service, has launched an excellent new messaging feature in their Android and iOS apps. The new messaging feature allows teachers to send messages to parents about their children. The messaging featuring can be used to send messages to parents on an individual basis and on a whole group basis. ClassDojo is using the term "Direct Messaging" to refer to sending messages to individuals and the term "Broadcast Messaging" to refer to sending messages to all parents in a group.

ClassDojo's messaging service, like that of Remind 101 and similar messaging services, hides the personal contact information of the teacher and the of the parents. Parents have to opt-in to receive messages from the teacher.

Applications for Education
The new direct messaging aspect of ClassDojo's messaging service could be a great tool for keeping parents informed about the positive things their children are doing in your classroom. The broadcast messaging aspect of ClassDojo's messaging service could be good for sending reminders to all parents about things like due dates for paperwork or homework that their children need to complete.

I would be a little leery of using the messaging service to notify parents of negative behaviors. In those cases I would still prefer speaking directly to parents.