Using SMS to connect with your school community

For our last parent teacher conferences at Haverhill High School, I offered parents to sign up online using my Google Calendar. Many parents took advantage of this offer. During the conferences, I offered parents the option to sign up for text message alerts from me for their child’s major test scores. Several parents signed up for that as well. Many of us subscribe to various text message services, such as weather updates and sports scores. We use texting to stay connected with our social circles; then why not use it to stay in touch with the stakeholders of our students' education? Why not integrate text messaging for communicating with the community in which we teach? There are several options on the web that could handle mass communication via SMS messaging. For example, look at Twitter, Mobilizeus, School Messenger, and Broadtexter. Twitter http://www.twitter.com and Broadtexter http://www.broadtexter.com are free. With these free services, you can:

• Allow those in your community to subscribe to your alerts
• Create a signup widget for your webpage or blog
• Schedule text alerts in advance
• Send alerts from a computer or mobile device

Note: Standard text messaging rates apply.