Conduct county/state PD workshops: Sort of.  I applied, but ultimately was not chosen, to run some county-level PD workshops this year.  I was, however, asked to run two sessions at the New Jersey Education Association’s Technology Integration Conferences this spring.  Prior obligations prevented me from attending both, but I was able to make it to Trenton a few weeks ago to speak with a group of teachers about Google Sites.  I’m told it went well.   And in that vein…

Present at NJEA 2009: Yes!  Every November, the New Jersey Education Association hosts its annual convention in Atlantic City over two days.  Last summer, I submitted two proposals for the convention’s “High Tech Hall”, hedging my bets that one would be accepted and the other, not.  To my surprise, not only were both accepted (meaning I was “on stage” for eight straight hours the first day of the convention!), but I was also asked to come back the second day to do a one-hour workshop on wikis in the classroom.  It was a phenomenal experience (I wrote about it here and here), and I’ve already submitted more proposals for Convention 2010.

Attend two psychology conferences: Achievement unlocked!  I attended a presentation in King of Prussia, PA in September on Asperger Syndrome and the New Jersey Association of School Psychologists Winter Conference in Jamesburg, NJ in December.  While I mostly write here about educational technology, I am still a school psychologist for several hours out of the week, and I find far fewer online PD resources in this arena than I do for general ed classroom teachers.  One notable exception to this is the National Association of School Psychologists, who has an entire hub of online resources, including RSS feeds of info, blogs, and online webinars and presentations for which I can receive continuing education credit hours towards my national school psychologist re-certification (thanks, NASP!).  Beyond them, however, I haven’t found much (but am open to suggestions if you have any!).

In a related vein, I also had the privilege of attending a talk by renowned education law guru Perry Zirkel, who came to my school to address an audience of special education teachers and Child Study Team members from Hunterdon County.  An unexpected PD bonus, to be sure!

Get an iPhone: (OK, so they can’t all be lofty goals.) I’d lusted over the iPhone since the day it came out, but in the weeks leading up to my current contract expiring, Sprint introduced a new Android phone, the HTC Hero.  I ended up sticking with Sprint and purchasing the Hero shortly after it came out – the Android market is easily competitive with the iPhone App Store, and my monthly payment is still significantly less than what it would be with AT&T.  I love my Android phone, and can’t see myself going back now.  I didn’t technically achieve this goal, but I’m quite satisfied with how it turned out nonetheless.

Get published: Yes and no.  At the time of goal-setting, I had envisioned writing an article and having it published in an academic journal.  That hasn’t happened YET (but watch this space in the next year), but I am proud to announce that I will have two short stories published in upcoming anthologies by Kaplan Publishing.  The Teachable Moment is available from June 1, 2010, and includes my story “Alleviating Shakes-Fear”, about my experiences teaching Shakespeare’s works to high school students.  My second story, “The Ick Factor”, will appear in One Size Does Not Fit All (available from June 29, 2010), and presents my feelings on the importance of a visible GLBT presence in school curriculum.  As noted in the agreement I signed with Kaplan, I retain the copyright to my stories, and will be publishing them here as well over the next month or so.

Attend EduCon: Did it.  I only live an hour’s train ride away from Chris Lehmann’s Science Leadership Academy, so now that I’m done with grad school (for now) and my kids aren’t babies any more, I really had nothing preventing me from going.  I had wanted to attend since the first EduCon in 2008, but circumstances were such that I wasn’t able to make it until the 2010 event this past January.  I only attended one of the three days, and you can read my thoughts on my time there here.  Deven Black and I also recorded an episode of EdTechClassroom with Karen Chichester & Burt Lo in which we discussed our respective experiences at SLA (check it out here!).

There are two other goals on that list of a more personal nature that I can’t go into here, but I will say that one is in process and the other one has been intentionally deferred until next summer.

These certainly aren’t the only things I’ve done in the past year, but these were the major goals I wanted to make absolutely sure I hit (or at least made progress on) since last summer.  Would I have achieved them had I not recorded them and periodically referred to the mindmap?  Perhaps; it’s impossible to say, really.  All I know is I did write them down and I did achieve almost all of them… and yes, I’ve already started looking at my list of 2010-2011 goals and working hard to make those dreams realities, too.

We’re always setting short- and long-term goals for our students, but are you doing it for yourself?  We all have ideas of what we’d like to do, but have you taken the time to think 6-12 months into the future, put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard!), and make those intentions a little more concrete?  Perhaps most importantly (and terrifying), are you sharing those goals with anyone else?

Getting Started

All you need to sign up for the service is an email address.  If you wish to use the SMS reminder feature, you’ll need your mobile phone handy as well, as you’ll be sent a confirmation code via SMS.  This is important if you plan on using this service with more than one phone (e.g., a spouse, multiple students, a student’s parent, etc.) – you can connect one account to multiple phones, but you must have each phone handy in order to get the confirmation code.

Existing Reminders

Upon login, you are presented with a list of existing reminders.  You can choose to view these as a list (see below) or on a calendar.

While this is fantastic for reminders you set to repeat, the list can get cluttered if you don’t manually delete those one-time reminders (“pick up eggs and bread on the way home!”).  If you don’t see yourself pruning your list every so often, you may want to opt for the calendar view.

In list view, you’ll also see the frequency you’ve set for each message (more on how to do this in a bit):

Setting a New Reminder

Click “Add” on the upper right-hand menu to add a new reminder.  You’ll see a pretty self-explanatory set of text boxes:

I don’t categorize my reminders, but some folks may wish to do so.  Note the warning: if you have your reminder sent by SMS, only the “Title” field will be sent.  If it goes to email, you’ll also get whatever you type in the “Description” field.

Setting the Delivery Date

MyEmailReminders gives you several options for setting one-time-only and repeating reminders.  For something like a homework reminder, you may choose the fifth option down and check off every weekday.  Another example: I have yearly reminders set for the first days of March and December that remind my wife and I to make appointments to get our cars inspected.

Setting the Delivery Time/Method

Here’s where you decide if you want your reminders sent via email, SMS, or both.  As you can see from the options, you can choose any time of day (in 15-minute increments), and you can also have reminders sent prior to the event.  You can check off as many or as few of these boxes as you like.

Add Another Recipient?

You can send reminders to multiple recipients.  Anyone you designate can receive reminders via email, but as I noted above, only registered mobile phone numbers will receive SMS reminders.  As you can see from the screenshot, I’ve registered my wife’s phone so she can receive the occasional SMS reminder as needed (er, not that you ever need it, honey!).

After these steps, just click the orange “Add Reminder” button at the bottom of the page, and you’re all set!

Epilogue

As I explained last time, I like the idea of email- and SMS-based reminders due to the relative ubiquity of access and platform agnosticism.  Anecdotally, I can speak to the benefits I’ve derived from these reminders – in fact, sometimes the simple act of setting the reminder was enough to make me remember what I needed to!  If you use a similar service, or if you decide to start as a result of reading this, please leave a comment and share your experiences!

PingMe is a service that allows users to schedule reminders to be sent via SMS, email, and Twitter. I’ve been a loyal user for over two years now (according to my archive, the first reminder I sent myself was to prep then-newborn Kiera’s bottle at a certain time) primarily because of the several similar services I tried, PingMe was consistently on time with its reminders, as opposed to several minutes early or late (or not at all, like some of its competitors). It is easy to use, dependable, and best of all, free.

Correction: was easy to use, dependable, and free.

I got an email earlier this week or last from parent company Zetetic announcing the closure of this project (see the announcement on their blog). While I am very disappointed, this is the risk we run with free web apps, which is why it always pays to have an alternative service in mind (I eventually did find one, but that’ll be in my next post).

The closure of PingMe hit me much harder than would, say, a service like Wordle or a Quillpill because I have used their service in both my professional and personal lives, and found it to be invaluable in helping me remember to do everything from getting money from the MAC machine (ATM or cashpoint to you outside the Northeast United States!) to picking up milk on the way home to making an important call within a certain window of time.  I’ve used it to remind myself of important work-related issues that had to be attended to at specific times, too.

While I’ve been utilizing SMS & email reminder systems in my personal & professional lives for years now, I’m certainly not the only one. In fact, multiple studies have shown SMS reminders to have mostly high (but admittedly varying) degrees of efficacy in increasing desired behaviors, including:

• adherence to medical treatment schedules (Jacobson & Szilagyi, 2005; Kollmann, Riedl, Kastner, Schreier, & Ludvik, 2007; Liu, Abba, Alejandria, Balanag, Berba, & Lansang, 2008; Strandbygaard, Thomsen, & Backer, 2009;  Hanauer, Wentzell, Laffell, & Laffel, 2009)
• attendance at doctor & specialist appointments (Downer, Meara, Da Costa, & Sethuraman, 2006; Koshy, Car, & Majeed, 2008; Chen, Fang, Chen, Dai, 2008; Foley & O’Neill, 2009; Kruse, Hansen, & Olesen, 2009)
• participation in exercise regiments (Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2009; Prestwich, Perugini, & Hurling, 2010)

Implementation

I’m thinking that this is a potentially powerful tool for students with weaknesses in organization and executive functioning (read Rebecca’s post about planning her wedding for a good overview of what executive functioning is).  Off the top of my head (and please add your own suggestions in the comments), email/SMS reminders could be used for:

• homework assignments
• project due dates & reminders
• standing appointments in school
• reminders for students with home-based PT regiments
• facilitating home/school communication

These are very broad categories, and could take many different shapes based on the needs of individual students or the framework within which they live & attend school (e.g., would the teacher set the reminder, would the student set the reminder, etc.).  Also, if I may bemoan the loss of PingMe once more, it had a great ‘repeat’ function which would persist in sending texts until the recipient replied with a specific command to shut it off.

Obstacles/Considerations

As I said when I wrote about this a few years ago, privacy concerns are an issue.  Sensitive information probably should not be sent through these third-party services (although one might argue that they’re just as susceptible to security breaches as sending unencrypted email between two parties).  Also, I understand that texts do cost money to send and receive.  While I’ve limited my research to services that send texts for free, there is always a cost associated with receiving texts, either per message (usually $0.10 – $0.20 per) or in the shape of an unlimited monthly allotment.  While I can’t make that charge go away, the ubiquity of text messaging means that more and more people are moving in the direction of unlimited plans (at least in my entirely anecdotal experience).  Schools may also find it a worthwhile investment to purchase cheap handsets and provide prepaid service under the umbrella of assistive technology, treating the device more as a PDA than a phone.

But I Know a Great iPhone/Android/BlackBerry/WinMo App That Does This!

Congratulations; so do I – I have one on my Android phone that works quite nicely.   The point of using the SMS method of communication is that it is platform agnostic; that is, it doesn’t matter which type of phone one has, whether it’s ‘smart’ or ‘dumb’ or iPhone or Android or whatever – the vast majority of modern phones can send and receive simple text messages.  There’s no need to outfit the entire 10th grade with iPhones for just one app when an SMS can be sent to any one of the phones already in their pockets.

In my next post, I’ll provide an overview of the service that has supplanted PingMe as my reminder utility of choice.

References

Chen, Z., Fang, L., Chen, L., & Dai, H. (2008). Comparison of an SMS text messaging and phone reminder to improve attendance at a health promotion center: a randomized controlled trial. Journal Of Zhejiang University. Science. B, 9(1), 34-38. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Downer, S.R., Meara, J.G., Da Costa, A.C., & Sethuraman, K. (2006). SMS text messaging improves outpatient attendance. Australian Health Review, 30(3): 389-96. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Foley, J., & O’Neill, M. (2009). Use of mobile telephone short message service (SMS) as a reminder: the effect on patient attendance. European Archives of Pediatric Dentistry, 10(1): 15-8. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Hanauer, D.A., Wentzell, K., Laffell, N., & Laffel, L.M. (2009). Computerized Automated Reminder Diabetes System (CARDS): E-Mail and SMS Cell Phone Text Messaging Reminders to Support Diabetes Management. Diabetes Technology & Therapeutics, 11(2), 99-106. Retrieved from Academic Search Premier database.

Jacobson, V.J., & Szilagyi, P. (2005). Patient reminder and patient recall systems to improve immunization rates. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (3): CD003941. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Kollmann, A., Riedl, M., Kastner, P., Schreier, G., & Ludvik, B. (2007). Feasibility of a mobile phone-based data service for functional insulin treatment of Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus patients.  Journal of Medical Internet Research, 9(5), e36. doi: 10.2196/jmir.9.5.e36.

Koshy, E., Car, J., & Majeed, A. (2008). Effectiveness of mobile-phone short message service (SMS) reminders for ophthalmology outpatient appointments: observational study. BMC Opthalmology, 31(8):9. Retrieved from PubMed database.

Kruse, L., Hansen, L., & Olesen, C. (2009). [Non-attendance at a pediatric outpatient clinic. SMS text messaging improves attendance]. Ugeskrift For Laeger, 171(17), 1372-1375. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Liu, Q., Abba, K., Alejandria, M.M, Balanag, V.M., Berba, R.P., & Lansang, M.A. (2008). Reminder systems and late patient tracers in the diagnosis and management of tuberculosis. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews (4): CD006594.  Retrieved from PubMed database.

Prestwich, A., Perugini, M., & Hurling, R. (2010). Can implementation intentions and text messages promote brisk walking? A randomized trial. Health Psychology: Official Journal Of The Division Of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association, 29(1), 40-49. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

Prestwich, A., Perugini, M., & Hurling, R. (2009). Can the effects of implementation intentions on exercise be enhanced using text messages?. Psychology & Health, 24(6), 677-687. doi:10.1080/08870440802040715.

Strandbygaard, U., Thomsen, S., & Backer, V. (2010). A daily SMS reminder increases adherence to asthma treatment: a three-month follow-up study. Respiratory Medicine, 104(2), 166-171. Retrieved from MEDLINE with Full Text database.

I fired up my MindMeister account and started a mind map entitled “Yearly Goals”.  From this central main topic, I had five branches – one for each of the next five academic years (e.g., “2009-2010″, “2010-2011″, etc.):

As I recorded some of the ideas I had thought of earlier on the mindmap, I placed them under the year I thought I’d begin or complete them.  I don’t want to go into too many specific details here regarding content, but I will say that by the time I was finished, I had a very clear idea of what I was going to work on this summer and coming school year and what could safely wait until at least next summer and beyond.  This has helped me to focus my energy and attention on what is most immediately needed.

In the matter of about 20-30 minutes, I went from feeling overwhelmed with abstract concepts and ideas to having a very clearly defined, well organized plan of attack.  Mindmapping is not something I ever got into in depth with my students (although I did use graphic organizers to aid in writing), but maybe I should have.  My expertise is in the secondary English/language arts setting, but I imagine students in any project-based or multi-step environment could benefit from something like this.  In addition to helping me “pace myself” and sort out a plan of attack, an unexpected benefit of this exercise was seeing what smaller milestones I can achieve in between the major ones I’m shooting for.  Instead of focusing on the big things I’m planning for 2011-2012, for example, and wishing I could fast-forward to that date, I now have a list of smaller, more manageable (but still important) achievements to keep my focus on in the here & now (not one of my strong suits!).

Although I did this for personal reasons, how many of your students, in a special ed or general ed setting, could benefit from some short and long-term goal-setting like this, online or off, for curricular or other purposes?

For further information on mindmaps, check out Dr. Brian Friedlander’s blog – he has written more extensively on the topic than any other blogger I’ve read.

So every member of my new Child Study Team has some ‘pet project’ that they contribute to the department, and along those lines, I’ve been approached to put together a website for the department (not sure if it’s just for CST or Special Services in general; will get more details in the summer).

[...]

Would love to hear your thoughts in the comments here – parents, what info can we make readily available to you?  Special ed teachers/service providers, what “frequently asked questions” or topics would you put on a site for the community?

Although this project is still in the very early stages, I have some thoughts as to what I think needs to go on this site at minimum:

• “plain English” description of the NJ special ed determination process
• downloadable PDFs of NJAC 6:14 (special education code), PRISE (Parental Rights in Special Education), and similar documents
• little blurbs about each of the CST members (4 psychologists, 2 LDTCs, 1 social worker) and our supervisor, along with contact information (phone, email, fax)
• information on transition services and options
• links to useful external sources

I’m not quite at the point of creating a Twitter account for our Child Study Team, but I would like to do something a little more personalized than a static website, like maybe have a monthly blog post from a different CST member (a la a newsletter).  I did create a wiki for the Special Services dept. at my last school as part of my grad school internship project, so I do have a basic blueprint, but given the additional year and a half or so of technical experience I’ve gained since putting that up (plus the fact that I’ll be using locally hosted WordPress as my canvas), I think I can kick this site up a notch.

So what do YOU think needs to feature on this website?  Sky’s the limit, at least as we kick ideas around in this space.

1. present my thoughts to you for pushback, tweaking, challenge, & discussion
2. provide a model to anyone who is considering making the leap to an online portfolio (including all the undergrad education majors and graduate students who’ll be finishing their degrees in two months and on the job hunt)

I’m planning on covering a number of facets of this process over the course of four or five blog posts in March, so I hope you’ll follow and contribute your insights to my experiences.  As I’ve learned is so often the case with all things “ed tech”, the technology isn’t much without a supporting philosophy.  I’ll expound on that more over the course of the month, but whether you’re putting together your first online portfolio, or, like me, have one but are in the mood to try something new, I hope you’ll join in the conversation.

Fast forward to September 2008: I’m now a school psychologist, responsible for a case management load of over 70 students.  I started using one of my first “Web 2.0″ loves, Tiddlywiki, to help keep my notes on each student organized.  As much as I liked it for maintaining plain text notes, that’s really all it could do without further tinkering.  Linking to local files was too time-consuming, and God forbid I move a file – broken & useless link.

When I switched schools in January, I also switched note-keeping tools.  Looking for something a little more robust than Tiddlywiki, I dusted off my Evernote install, updated to the latest version, and began to play.  My trial period turned into a love affair.

How We Roll

Within a given account, Evernote allows you to create “notebooks”, and within each notebook, you have “notes” – think of them as a neverending stack of index cards.  Like Tiddlywiki, these notes can accommodate plain text, hyperlinks, bullets, number lists, etc., but Evernote also allows you to drag and drop files into your “index cards”.  Users with free accounts are restricted to dragging and dropping images, audio, ink, and PDF files, but if you are a paying user ($5/mo or $45/yr), you can drag any kind of file AND have Evernote synchronize so that your files are accessible from any computer with Evernote installed, the Evernote website, or your mobile phone (via either a mobile site, Windows Mobile app, or iPhone app).

In my quest to go as paperless as possible at work, I scan a lot of documents to PDF.  When I drag them into Evernote, I can view the document directly in Evernote via their baked-in PDF viewer (courtesy the good folks at Foxit, maker of my PDF viewer of choice).

Relevance to School Psychology

Ours is a profession that depends greatly on paper trails and written documentation.  Evernote is a convenient, paper-free method of storing information in just about any medium you may use.  From an organizational standpoint, here’s an example of how I’ve set up some notebooks on general topics:

This screenshot is from my home computer.  The notebooks with greyed-out icons are local-only; the green icons indicated synchronized folders (I access these from my computer at work, too). As you can see, I’ve set up separate notebooks for business cards, documentation regarding my certification status in both NJ and PA, information on doctoral programs, our local Polytech program, and even a repository of research articles I have encountered over the years.

Beneath these notebooks are individual notebooks for each student on my caseload.  Any time I need to record pertinent information for or about a student, it goes directly into Evernote.  I have a clipboard & pen that saves my written notes as PDFs, so even when I am without my computer (e.g., a classroom observation), I can still write down what I need to, save it to PDF, and drop it from the clipboard’s SD card right into Evernote.

I have even been able to digitally record important information, compress the wav file, and archive it here.  Who needs a stack of cassette tapes lying around when you can keep it all here?

Even if you don’t wish to set up several notebooks, you can use Evernote as a “brain dump” and use their search function to find what you need when you need it.  Their OCR technology even allows you to search the text in PDFs and photographs.

Of course, privacy and confidentiality are also important.  Evernote blogged about this here, and they also post their privacy policy online.  As an additional security precaution, information within notes is encryptable.

Denouement

Evernote has been a great organizational tool for this psychologist over the two months I’ve been using it.  It’s essentially a digital file cabinet that I’ll never even get close to filling – I’m a paid member, and even after syncing a ton of PDFs and quite a few zipped .wav files, I still only used 160 MB of my 500 MB monthly limit this month (free members get 40 MB/mo).  Maybe a good analogy is to think of Evernote as an iTunes for your notes and documents – sure, you could open up separate folders and click on individual mp3s to listen to music, but isn’t it easier to manage them all in one central location?

As an English teacher, I taught many sections of our tenth-grade English II course that were designated as In-Class Support (ICS).  In these classes, we would have as many as 10 students with learning disabilities along with another 10-15 students who did not have learning disabilities.  The goal of the ICS model is to allow special education to be as inclusive as possible by assigning two teachers to a classroom, one content area teacher and one special education teacher.    The course content is identical to that of non-ICS general education courses.

Given the high co-morbidity rate of ADHD and other learning disabilities, it’s not uncommon to have students in these classes who comprehend the material well enough, but have serious trouble organizing their thoughts in writing.  This can be difficult enough for 15-year-olds without any other influences, but when you throw ADHD and other SLDs into the mix, the writing process can become incredibly frustrating for both student and teacher.

About five years ago, I had a student who was experiencing great difficulty writing a research paper.  He knew what he wanted to say, but told me he just couldn’t make sense of what was in his head to get it on paper.  Rough drafts were due that week, so I told him to bring in a rough draft and I’d work with him after school to try to help him.

When we sat down together to look at his draft, I saw exactly what he meant.  The paragraphs themselves were more or less focused on a single topic, but reading the paper as a whole, the topics shifted from this to that back to this again.  It was incredibly difficult to follow his train of thought and the defense of his thesis.

I tried explaining why the paragraphs didn’t make sense in the order they were in, but the student wasn’t getting me.  I don’t know how I got the idea, but I eventually got up, walked over to the teacher’s desk, grabbed a pair of scissors, and returned to the student.  After getting his permission, I proceeded to cut his essay up by paragraph.  I then asked him to put all the paragraphs that deal with Topic A in a pile (whatever Topic A was), all the Topic B paragraphs in another pile, and all the Topic C paragraphs in a third pile.

I will never forget the look in his eyes and the widening “O” his mouth made as he uttered he magic words: “Ohhh, I GET it now!  Thanks, Mr. B!”  He reorganized his paper that weekend and, if I remember correctly, received an A or B on the final draft.

Cliff’s Notes Version: Physical manipulatives can be great for getting kids (and teachers!) to grasp abstract concepts like writing or mathematics, and they can be found (or made) in the least likely places.

File-hosting site Drop.io just added a “fax this” option – you can send any DOC or PDF file you store there directly to a fax machine (sorry, no ODF support yet). It’s similar to the service that FaxZero provides, but Drop.io’s restrictions are much more lax: 20 page per fax limit w/no stated daily limit on faxes sent, as opposed to FaxZero’s 3 page fax max, twice per day (with an ad on the cover page, too). There is a process by which you can receive incoming faxes to your Drop.io account, too, but the process is a little more involved (but still free).

Whenever I have to email important documents (e.g., my resume), I always prefer to send a PDF (no real justification; it just feels right). CutePDF offers a free utility that installs itself as a printer option. Just hit “print” from your document, spreadsheet, web page, etc., and select “CutePDF” from the dropdown printer menu. Your document will “print” to a PDF file that you can now send to Drop.io to be faxed (of course, if you were using OpenOffice you could just hit “Print to PDF” and not even need CutePDF in the first place).

My recent purchase of a scanner (finally, I know), along with these free utilities, has significantly reduced, if not eliminated, the odds of me having to send another costly fax from my local Staples’ dodgy fax machine ever again. It’s the small victories in life that make it worth living.

Next time, we’ll explore jailbreaking your iPhone to use as a corded rotary landline.

Organizational support is especially important for our students with learning disabilities, many of whom also exhibit symptoms of ADHD (there’s anywhere from a 15-80% comorbidity rate of LD & ADHD, depending on who you ask). Many of these students are so lacking in organizational strategies that the help of an aide or special ed teacher is explicitly written into their IEPs. I’m wondering if offering them an organizational tool in the form of a familiar, comfortable technology might empower them to take more ownership of this aspect of their learning.

Our kids use cell phones every day to communicate with friends and family. Can we teach them to harness the power of voice and text communication for organizational purposes? Here are three FREE services I use to help me remember important tasks:

Jott (public beta)

This service allows you to call a (US) toll-free number (probably irrelevant in this age of standard US nationwide calling plans; there’s a local 647 number for Canuckistani Jotters) and dictate text to be sent to any email address in your Jott addressbook. You can also use Jott’s contact manager to create groups of recipients (e.g., Family, Soccer Team, Period 1 Students).

Set up an account at Jott.com. You’ll be asked for an email address and a phone number to associate with your account. When you call Jott, you’ll be asked, “Who do you want to Jott?” Say the name of any contact or group in your account (Say “Me” or “Myself” to Jott yourself). After the beep, leave a quick message (“Vocabulary homework; read Chapters 3 and 4″). Your message will be transcribed by either voice-recognition software or a human transcriptionist and sent to the contact’s email address.

For bonus tech geekery, do what I do and have a Gmail filter/label combo set up for Jotts (click thru for a cleaner pic):

Wakerupper (private beta)

Wakerupper is marketed as a free wake-up call service. Use the drop-down time menu and calendar to schedule calls; Wakerupper’s text-to-voice software can even play a recording of a short typed message.

This is a much more “bare bones” approach to reminders than Jott, and could be valuable for students who don’t spend much time on email, but can access the site to schedule some reminder calls. I’ve never scheduled a reminder call for more than a day in advance, but the calendar doesn’t seem to have a defined time limit. Wakerupper’s site says you can schedule reminder calls via phone, too, but as yet, I haven’t been able to locate that number. (Edit: Wakerupper customer support sez the schedule-by-phone option has been removed until it can be further refined)

Wakerupper is still in private beta testing, and you must email them at beta@wakerupper.com to request an account. This isn’t like some other beta sites, though – I got my account within minutes of requesting it.

TextMemos

Similar to Wakerupper, TextMemos allows you to advance-schedule text messages for most major mobile carriers. The only catch here is that if you’re not in the US, you must know the recipient’s mobile carrier (not a problem if you’re texting yourself). Type in your text message, set the date and time, choose the carrier, and away you go.

So which one is best? As always, depends on the needs of the user. I love Jott, but I have easy access to email through much of my day, and it’s my “command center”. Students who have limited computer (but ubiquitous mobile) access would probably be better served by Wakerupper or TextMemos, and even then it’s a question of personal preference of text or voice.

Privacy concerns here are valid. All three services have stringent privacy policies, but I still probably wouldn’t use any of these services to convey sensitive information (if they want to tell the world that I ran out of milk this morning, they’re welcome to).

My students are glued to their mobile phones (overheard in homeroom one day: “You can’t just… NOT text. That’s ridiculous.”), so I think it makes sense to put them to some good use. I doubt I’ll be requiring them to txt in their homework anytime soon, but I wonder if using these tools for automated reminders would help them in any way.

All services are available in the US and Canadia (English only); TextMemos is currently the only one that can be used outside these countries.

EDIT: I think it’s important to note that I have no vested business interest in or connections to any of these companies, other than as a very satisfied consumer of their respective products. Just in case the Edublogger’s Ethics Committee comes knocking…