Remind

What is Remind?

Positioning: Remind is a K-12 communication platform focused on fostering seamless connections between educators, students, and parents, offering a safe and accessible environment for academic and administrative messaging.Functional Panorama: The platform covers real-time two-way messaging for direct communication and one-way announcements for broad dissemination. It includes scheduling tools for parent-teacher conferences and office hours, facilitates file and photo sharing, and supports group and individual conversations. A key feature is its translation capabilities for over 100 languages. For schools and districts, Remind Hub provides advanced features like rostering synchronization, district-wide communication controls, attendance tracking, online payment collection, and comprehensive safety features including content moderation and reporting tools. It also integrates with popular Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Google Classroom and Canvas.

Remind’s Use Cases

• Teachers can send urgent announcements to all parents/students, share homework assignments, schedule virtual office hours, and receive direct messages from students regarding coursework.
• School Administrators can communicate school-wide alerts, manage district-level announcements, track attendance, and ensure consistent messaging across all classes.
• Parents can receive real-time updates on their child’s progress, school events, and emergencies, engage in direct conversations with teachers, and participate in scheduled meetings.
• Students can receive assignment reminders, ask questions directly to their teachers, and stay informed about class activities and school announcements.
• District Leaders can streamline communication policies, monitor platform usage for safety and compliance, and deploy centralized messaging campaigns across multiple schools.

Remind’s Key Features

• Real-time Messaging & Announcements: Core feature allowing instant, two-way communication and one-way broadcasts for updates.
• Translation Capabilities: Supports over 100 languages, allowing messages to be translated for recipients automatically, enhancing accessibility for diverse communities.
• Office Hours for Remind Hub: Added in October 2023, this feature allows educators to set specific availability for one-on-one or small group meetings, streamlining scheduling and parent engagement.
• Enhanced Attendance Feature: Introduced in February 2024, enabling educators to mark and track student attendance directly within the platform, integrating communication with daily operations.
• Remind Analytics: Launched in March 2024, providing schools and districts with data insights into communication patterns, engagement rates, and message effectiveness.
• Safety and Content Moderation: Includes automated content flagging for inappropriate messages and the ability for users to report concerns, ensuring a secure communication environment.
• User-Feedback: Robust File Sharing: Users frequently request more robust file management and preview capabilities for documents and media shared within conversations.

How to Use Remind?

1. Sign Up & Create a Class: Visit remind.com or download the Remind app, then sign up as an educator, parent, or student. Educators can then create a new class, giving it a name and description.
2. Add Participants: Share your unique class code with students and parents, or manually add participants via phone number or email. For schools/districts, rostering can automate this process.
3. Send Messages or Announcements:
   • Official Workflow: From the class dashboard, click “Message” to send a direct message to individuals or groups, or “Announcement” to broadcast a message to the entire class. Type your message and hit send.
   • Pro Tip: Attach files, photos, or voice clips to messages by tapping the paperclip icon. You can also schedule announcements to be sent at a future date and time for pre-planning.
4. Manage Conversations and Settings:
   • Official Workflow: Access your inbox to view and respond to messages. Adjust notification settings within the app or web interface to control how and when you receive alerts.
   • Pro Tip: For language translation, recipients can set their preferred language in their Remind profile, and messages will automatically translate for them. Teachers can also leverage the “Office Hours” feature to set up specific times for parent meetings.

Remind’s Pricing & Access

• Free Tier: Available for individual educators, parents, and students. This tier supports core messaging, announcements, file sharing, and basic class management for unlimited classes and participants.
• Remind Hub for Schools & Districts: This enterprise-level solution offers advanced features not available in the free tier, including district-wide communication oversight, centralized rostering and data synchronization, enhanced safety controls, comprehensive analytics, and priority support. Pricing is custom and requires contacting Remind sales for a quote, based on the size and specific needs of the school or district.
• Web Dynamics: While specific pricing for Remind Hub is not publicly listed, its value proposition is often compared to competitors like ParentSquare, emphasizing ease of use and high adoption rates. Recent searches did not indicate any public limited-time offers, as institutional pricing is typically negotiated.
• Tier Differences: The primary distinction lies between the free individual offering and the paid Remind Hub. The Hub unlocks advanced reporting and analytics, administrative controls for district-wide communication, integrations with SIS/LMS for automated rostering, and payment processing capabilities for school fees or activities.

Remind’s Comprehensive Advantages

• Widespread Adoption & Accessibility: Remind is widely adopted across the K-12 sector, cited as being used in over 80% of U.S. public schools, which facilitates broader community engagement. Its availability on web, iOS, and Android ensures high accessibility for all users, including those with limited data plans.
• Superior Language Translation: Remind’s built-in translation feature supports over 100 languages, offering a significant advantage over many competitors by automatically translating messages, which is crucial for diverse school communities and promotes equitable communication access.
• Enhanced Safety and Compliance: The platform includes robust safety features such as content flagging, message reporting, and administrative oversight tools, providing a more secure communication environment compared to informal channels like personal texting or generic social media groups.
• Ease of Use for Educators: Remind consistently receives high marks in user satisfaction surveys for its intuitive interface and ease of setup, making it quicker for teachers to adopt and integrate into their daily workflow compared to more complex LMS communication modules.
• Dedicated K-12 Focus: Unlike general communication tools, Remind is built specifically for the unique needs of K-12 education, ensuring features like attendance tracking and rostering integrations are tailored for school environments, which may be less robust in broader messaging platforms.