Living in the 4th Screen

Exploring the use of mobile technology in education and life

Free Resources for Teachers to communicate with students or parents and never give out your personal cell phone number

Below are some resources to help you use email or text messages to communicate with your students. These services work for class assignment reminders, communicating with students on a class trip, updating the members (and parents) of a sports team about a change in practice, and so on and so forth.


Remind101_logo
 Remind 101 is a free service you can use to set up text or email reminders for when assignments are due. As a teacher you create an account and then set up classes. The students can then log in and set up what kind of reminders they want to receive (text, email, or both). You can set reminders up in advance or as you go along through the semester. Parents can even create an account and choose to get the reminders.


Cel.ly is a new mass text messaging
service that says they are interested in schools using their free service! You can get started by texting "start" to 23559. Cel.ly will then ask you for a login and password. You can then go to the website Cel.ly, login and set up text message channels. Each channel is set up with a keyword so that students, teachers, community members, and parents can join your mass text message with a keyword from their cell phone! There does not seem to be a limit on the number of people that can join your mass alert. Cel.ly also gives you three choices in how you want to set up the mass text alerts. You can have all members send messages back and forth to the whole group. You can have only the teacher (owner of the channel) send messages to the group. You can have the group members send messages back to the teacher only! In addition your texting channel can be public or private! All messages are archived in Cel.ly! You can send messages via the Cel.ly website or via phone. It works quickly and easily!

Pulse.to is similar to Cel.ly. You can login to the website, create a free account and then you start to set up pulses. You can have a public or private mass texting channel (called "pulses"). In addition, you can select if only the pulse owner can send messages or if everyone in the group can send messages. Pulse.to works in many different countries besides the US and Canada! In addition there is not a short code to join, rather students/teachers/parents can text in to a real phone number (so phones that don't work with short codes or keywords will still work with this service!).

Voice_logo
 Google Voice is a free service from Google that allows you to get a phone number that you can use to ring all of you phones. Sign up for a free account and you can use it for the services listed above with your students. This way you never have to give out your cell phone number to students. You give them your Google Voice number. You can set the Google Voice number to ring whatever phone you want to. You can have voice mails go to your email account, your cell phone, home phone, your neighbor's phone, or any phone you choose. It can even ring all those phones at once if you want. You can set up the number to send you a text message when you get a new call. You can give out the number and use it for text messaging as well. Using Google Voice with the one of the services mentioned above allows you to communicate with your students without ever giving out your personal phone number.

Thanks to Liz Kolb (@lkolb) for most of this information.

Send Group Email, Text Messages, or Audio files

Send_gm
 
SendGM is a service that allows you to send text messages, emails, or audio messages to groups of people. A free account allows you to set up a group of 25 maximum users. If you need to create larger groups you would have to pay a fee.
 
The following is from the SendGM website:
 
Send_gm_-_2
 
Via Liz Kolb at Cell Phones In Learning

Dial2Do - Send yourself reminders using your voice

Dial2do
Frequently when I am driving the 25 minute commute to or from work I think of things I want to do. In the past I would try and grab a piece of paper and make a note to remind myself. I knew this was not the safest method but I did not want to forget the idea. Often I was unable to make a note and I just hoped I remembered the idea when I got to my destination. Shortly after getting my iPhone over a year and a half ago I found out about a service called Dial2Do. The service allows me to use my voice to send myself email reminders. It converts my voice into text and then sends an email. Along with the text version of the email you can listen to the original voice message. The service does so much more, but I use it to primarily send myself email reminders. I have used it to send emails to other people in my contact list. The service is free and works very well. I would say I have had about 90-95% accuracy with the conversion of my voice to text. Dial2Do works with any type of cell phone.

You can use Dial2Do to update Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Xpenser, Evernote, Toodledo, and even your calendar. You can even listen to the weather or your emails. Follow the link above to check it out.

Voice on the Go - Read and respond to email and text messages while you are driving

Voice_on_the_go
The service Voice on the Go allows you to read and respond to email and text messages using your voice. The service works with any phone and is free for the first 60 days. You can upload your contact list to the service. You can also update your social networks and calendar by using your voice. Follow this link to watch a video demonstration.

Do Moms use Smartphones?

This post on ReadWriteWeb details how Moms are using their iPhones. There are some interesting statistics embedded in the article. Apparently Moms are hard demographic to reach:

Not too long ago, mothers were still considered to be a hard group to reach through mobile applications because they tend to be late adopters. The iPhone's mainstream success has changed this, however, and iPhone moms have now become a desirable target demographic for marketers.

According to the post, moms are using their iPhones to shop and make grocery lists. Many moms are putting apps on their phones for their younger children to play with and keep them occupied. I have had a similar experience in our home.

My wife and I each have an iPhone 3G. We use them for many different tasks throughout the day. When I try to explain to people what I believe one of the key attractions to the iPhone is, being user friendly, I use my wife as an example. My wife is not someone who would be considered an early adopter of technology. She used the family computer to check email and occasionally to shop for something online. But she embraced the iPhone immediately because it was instant and easy access to information. Honestly, I was amazed at how quickly my wife took to the iPhone. She rarely uses the home computer anymore. Email is almost exclusively done on the iPhone (she manages two email addresses). She uses a grocery app, to keep different shopping lists for each store she regularly shops at. She listens to podcasts and music often. She also can be found watching a few Brian Regan You Tube videos. She does have a few games on her phone for our children to play with, but my iPhone has more and frequently the kids will ask to use my phone for those purposes. She takes pictures and emails them to family and relatives. She uses Google Tasks to manage her daily chores. She uses the built is calendar app to manage her appointments. Her calendar is synched up with a Google Calendar in case she were to lose her iPhone. Many times my wife has commented how the iPhone has made it easier to manage her busy day.