Ready or Not...

...here they come! Another school year kicks off on Monday! This 2007-08 school year we once again welcome our returning and new postsecondary, ACE, and technical high school students!

Though pencils will still (undoubtedly) be around, our faculty are armed with new technology tools to inspire learning. Trained in blogs & RSS (Real Simple Syndication), wikis, unitedstreaming, PowerPoint, eInstruction clickers, and Photo Story 3, teachers are moving forward to use their strengths in the classroom environments. Discovering and sharing our positive teaching attributes and thinking about the 21st century skills our students need in our professional learning communities is a great springboard for further conversations. The support and comraderie amongst the faculty this past week of inservice sessions has been awesome. I can't wait to see it translated to their courses!

Contributing to the collaborative environment is the solid foundation of our fearless leader who jumped into the read/write web world with both feet (and survived I might add!). She gently nudges us to think and grow on a regular basis, despite all of the other pressures for which she must cope!

It is going to be a FANTASTIC year!

Photo credit to pencilpusher143's pencils on Flickr

oh, don't forget...

With the ubiquitous text messages flowing between student cell phones, here's a tool that can be put to constructive use. Oh, don't forget schedules text message reminders. Students can remind themselves of an upcoming research project deadline by simply adding their cell phone number, date and time, and the text message and voila, a message is queued up for you! Teachers can send reminders of upcoming quizzes, though multiple messaging appears to be labor-intensive...so best to teach students the "how to DIY".

Note: This is a free service, but regular text message fees from your service provider still apply!

photo credit to Jeff Hutton on flickr