You’ve likely heard about Remind from one of our Techscouts, Mona Parekh, at ICHE or Collaborative Learning Days (if not, check out this quick video for an overview). One of the criticisms I’ve heard about Remind is, well, not about Remind actually, but about Talon and how we use it.

Most instructors publish announcements on Talon, and some don’t want to have to publish twice just to get the extra benefit of reaching students through their beloved cell phones. If there was a way to display your Remind announcements on Talon, that would solve both problems, right? Talon widgets can help us here.

When it comes to my workflow, I’m a big fan of a principle in software development known as DRY (Don’t Repeat Yourself). If I find myself doing the same thing over and over, I look for ways to automate at least part of it. In this article, you’ll learn how you can publish all of your class announcements through Remind, and let the Remind widget show those announcements on Talon. This combines the best of both platforms. This allows us to reach students quickly through their phones, and have a backup archive of announcements in case a student loses their phone, or gets a new one without re-joining the class in Remind.

It is not an obvious process to set this up, but the video below shows a step-by-step walk-through of what to do. No coding is required; just strategic copy and pasting. I hope this can help you get a little more joy out of Remind. Let us know if you have any questions!