Posts Tagged ‘Online Tools’
One more incredible TXT tool
On my last post about great texting tools for youth ministry, Lex commented about another great way to send announcements to to your teens via text messages, this time for free.
She created a Twitter account for her youth group and then told her students how to sign up for mobile updates. Whenever she posts to the main Twitter account, every student gets a text message! Great for announcements, reminders, and encouragement. And because it’s web-based, parents and other adults who want to stay in the know can just go online to the profile page and see the latest posts.
Ready to do it? Here’s how. To create the youth group Twitter account:
- Go to www.twitter.com.
- Click “Join the conversation!” and follow the steps for creating an account.
Easy right? Now here’s what you need to tell your students to do:
- Start with the same thing you just did–go to www.twitter.com and create an account.
- Once created and logged in, go to “Settings”
- Click on “Devices”
- Follow the steps to add your mobile device (for US phones, in step one, enter “+1″ followed by your area code and number, no spaces).
- Go to the youth group’s main Twitter account (i.e. www.twitter.com/your_twitter_name)
- Click on “Follow”
- Click on “Device Updates Off”
- Click the “On” option
Sound complicated? It might be to us, but 99% of your students already use Twitter daily and could probably do a better job than me explaining how to do this ;)
Give it a try and let me know how it goes!
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Two Don’t-Miss YM Resources
- Simply TXT: Send individual or group text messages to your students, parents, or volunteers. This tool seriously blew me away. I’ve been dreaming about being able to create groups and send text messages on the fly, like I do with email now, but I had never seen something that could actually do it. Simply TXT lets you build groups and send messages whenever you like–you can even schedule them in advance–and the pricing is pretty reasonable.
- Poll Everywhere: Create polls and free response questions your students respond to via text message. Results are updated live and can be displayed right on the screen. Another tool I was honestly thinking, “Wouldn’t it be cool if…” before I heard about it. Pricing is also very reasonable with a free option for audiences under 30 people.
