Reach Every Parent / Sep 05, 2023
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We know that your hunt for the best teacher-parent communication app can be an incredibly time-consuming task. At ClassTag, our aim is to serve teachers well by equipping you with all the information needed to simplify your search. So in this guide, we’re here to offer you answers to this question many teachers like you ask: How is ClassTag different from Remind?
How is ClassTag Different from Remind?
Main Focus
At ClassTag, we bring teachers and families together within our one, unified platform to suit all of your communication needs. With an abundance of user-friendly tools, teachers are able to easily engage with parents in ways ranging from sending and receiving messaging in any language to requesting supply fund contributions.
To compare, according to Remind, the main focus is on text messaging to “manage school communication” and if anything beyond is offered, it comes at a cost to upgrade and is controlled at the district level. However, with ClassTag, connecting with whole families on a variety of levels and through a host of tools is key and it all happens for free for teachers!
Teacher-Parent Communication App Comparison: ClassTag vs. Remind
“ClassTag is a communication tool that makes life easier for the teacher. It is a Signup Genius, Remind, calendar, and class website all in one!”
– Beth Lafferty, 4th Grade Teacher at Lipscombe Academy
ClassTag Checks ALL the Boxes
Messaging, newsletters, and translation, oh my! As the chart above comparing ClassTag and Remind shows, ClassTag offers teachers and families numerous features and tools needed to truly engage with one another. And with us, our teacher-parent communication app is 100% free for teachers!
One of ClassTag’s main objectives is to help teachers to connect with every parent so that strong engagement, full participation, and incredible support become the norm.
Again, with Remind’s messaging feature at the center, teachers will need to use other apps and tools to make up for what’s what’s not available. You won’t need to do that when choosing ClassTag and its convenient, all-in-one platform!
For the rest of this guide, you will learn how ClassTag really is different as a teacher-parent communication app. Here are the areas where ClassTag truly excels:
Meeting and Event Schedule Coordinating
As teachers, you’ll need to request parental attendance for a number of events throughout the school year. Whether it’s parent-teacher conference time or time for class parent volunteering, usually, flyers are sent and calls are made in order to spread the word. It goes without saying that these ways don’t always get the message across to all of your students’ parents.
Easily Schedule EVERYTHING with ClassTag’s Teacher-Parent Communication App
When a teacher uses Remind, unfortunately, they will find that there are no integrated scheduling functions. Sure, you can send a text message through the app to prompt parents to check their mail/email/school website/child’s backpack to find your conference form/letter/flyer/sign up sheet, but those are already many steps compared what can be easily accomplished in just one step with ClassTag.
So, if you need to set up parent-teacher conferences or talent show guest judges, ClassTag is your scheduling needs go-to! When you set up meeting or volunteer times through ClassTag, you simply offer options that work best for you, making them available for parents to choose from. Then, on their end of the app, parents select the options that works best for them.
When it comes down to it, ClassTag makes it convenient and easy to schedule everything and everyone within a single platform!
Keeping Parents in the Loop
It’s important that parents are aware of all things occuring within their child’s classroom. As their teacher, providing such opportunities is a fantastic way uphold engagement and connection between all parties.
Weekly Newsletters Keeps Parents in the Loop
At ClassTag, we have a unique and informative feature called the “Weekly Summary”. It’s a newsletter that gets automatically sent to parents with things like your upcoming classroom activities, assignments, and information for the week. The Weekly Summaries get sent as a link contained within an SMS or email giving parents a tailored copy according to thir chosen notification preferences.
As a teacher, you can either personally craft your Weekly Summary message or let ClassTag do it for you. We’ll automatically take all you have scheduled for the week ahead, put it into your summary, and send it out. ClassTags’s Weekly Summary feature is a simple and effective way to maintain engagement with families and to keep them in the loop!
Storing and Sharing Student Work and Files with Your Teacher-Parent Communication App
Most times, teachers share student work with parents a few times a year during Back to School Night, Open House, and maybe even at a couple of parent-teacher conferences. But, wouldn’t it be better to have open, ongoing access for parents to see their child’s work?
Store and Share Student Work and Files
With Remind, there are no student work housing and sharing features. The closest thing to this would be taking several steps to snap a picture of each piece of student work you wish to share, upload them all as attachments, and then send them through the app’s text messaging function. So with Remind, if you do the math, that’s: ___ number of students X ___ number of attachments X ___ number of classes X ___ number of text messages = a lot of work.
Contrarily, ClassTag has an outstanding virtual portfolio feature called “Student Backpacks”. Our Student Backpacks allow you to quickly upload and share your students’ work with parents. Plus, Backpacks also stand as a secure place to store vital documents like copies of IEPs and 504 plans.
On top of this, parents are also able to join in on the sharing! They, too, can upload documents into their child’s Student Backpack for you to have accesss to. As a remarkable bonus, Classtag allows parents to respond to stories about student work. This is such a fantastic way to help promote complete community, continued collaboration, and full-on family engagement!
Accessibility and Engaging Every Family
Serving every family equitably can be hard if you don’t communicate in the same language. As well, what do you do when parents have limited access to technology? Clearly, language translation and catering to parents with technology restrictions are neccessities when it comes to effective and inclusive communication.
Automatically Translate Messages into 100+ Languages
The Remind app plans to offers some translation, but it’s not available as of yet. But once it is, this will be at an extra cost and only available at the district level to set the controls.
Now, use ClassTag and any message you send will be automatically converted into any of the 100+ languages available, according to parent-set preferences. This feature, of course, is free and allows teachers to connect with every parent in their preferred language.
With our school app for parents, you don’t have to wait for the district to pay a premium and then further wait for them to set every language for the vast number of parents within the entire school district. Instead, your class parents have the option of selecting the language they prefer to communicate with you in through ClassTag. So easy and so helpful!
Understanding and Addressing Parental Limitations with Technology Access
Maintaining excellent communication and engagment with every parent needs means you need to have the best app for teachers, hands down. Remind’s reach is limited to parents who have full full to technology and who are using the app. But what if parents don’t have much, or any, technology available to them? This is where ClassTag truly wins.
ClassTag allows you to send messages to parents through their own hand-selected choice of text, email, app, or website notifications.
But for parents with limited, to no, technology resources, ClassTag takes care of all the details. To demonstrate, when it becomes clear that messages aren’t being read by parents, you’ll be prompted with smart, actionable alerts and recommendations to ensure your communication gets through.
Our ClassTag app will suggest an idea such a printing out your messages to send home in kids’ backpacks or through the mail. Making sure that you are able to connect with each and every parent, by any means necessary, is important to ClassTag!
Integrations with Google
Many schools and districts take advantage of Google’s suite of educational tools. With this, we’ve designed everything about ClassTag to effortlessly integrate with all that Google offers educators.
ClassTag’s Google Classroom, Google Calendar, and Google Meet connections automatically help you to help parents stay organized and in the know with every school-related date they’re responsible for.
Let’s take those parent-teacher conference settings available through ClassTag that we talked about. Once a parent has chosen their desired time, the magic of the ClassTag + Google integration takes over and that appointment is auto-synced into their Google Calendar. But, keep reading, because the ingreation continues!
Need to hold a virtual meeting? No problem, we know you’re likely used to that. But get used to this added bonus ClassTag has to offer:
As conferences, events, and volunteer times are automatically placed into parents’ Google Calendar, any Meet conference link you’ve set will also be automatically included. As if that’s not enough, parents will receive automated reminders about their appointments through the ClassTag notifications!
You don’t have to do a thing to make sure that happens becasue ClassTag handles it all for you. This is an absolutely convenient and flexibile way to help parents maintain accountability! 
Your Teacher-Parent Communication App Should Help You Connect with Difficult-to-Reach Parents
Finally, both ClassTag and Remind feature parent engagement tracking. However, Remind only makes it available on the district level and at an added cost. With ClassTag, engagement tracking is free for teachers and its abilities are totally advanced.
With our parent-teacher communication tool, you’ll see when your messages are received and read by parents. When you send a message and it lays dormant on the other side, you can check the parent engagement stats. Maybe there’s an issue with parents opening and reading them, or perhaps their contact information is incorrect.
Whatever the case, ClassTag’s engagement stats help you better decide how to connect with parents who are hard to reach. Overall, engaging every parent is something that ClassTag will go to all ends with to help you!
A Teacher-Parent Communication App That Saves Teachers Money
Whether it’s a trip to the arts and crafts store to loading extra snacks into your family’s grocery cart, we know that teachers spend nearly $500 of their own money on class supplies each year. It’s awesome that teachers do this for their learners, but there has to be a better way.
With ClassTag’s Classroom Fund, you can get help with much-needed classroom supplies and keep your paycheck in the bank!
Through our Classroom Fund feature, you can make and share a list of supplies that are readily available to purchase through ClassTag’s supplies store. As parents check out your list, they are able to contribute any amount they’d like to that will go towards your supply store purchases. It’s literally that much of a breeze to make it happen!
Now, setting up your ClassTag Classroom Fund is super simple to do. In just a few clicks, you’ll have it set up fast and ready to share with parents. Then, you just sit back and watch as you’ll be on your way to getting much-needed supplies for your classroom students!
Unfortunately, Remind doesn’t have this supply help feature that exists with ClassTag’s Classroom Fund. Having an option like this in your parent-teacher communication tool is truly unique and necessary, really.
ClassTag is Clearly the BEST Teacher-Parent Communication App!
Now that you’ve learned about the ClassTag difference, we’re confident that we’re the best teacher-parent communication app out there.
Whether you need to send messages to parents, set up meetings, or get your Classroom Fund for supplies started, our vast communication and parent engagement features make ClassTag the optimal choice.
The great news is that you can consider your hunt done because ClassTag is clearly the best school communication app!
To see how ClassTag also compares to other apps, read this informative blog:
Teacher-Parent Communication App Comparison
Still curious? Classtag is free for you forever and that’s a price that’s worth your time. Go ahead… give it a try!
Join our amazing teacher community at ClassTag!
