Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Using SMS to connect with your school community

For our last parent teacher conferences at Haverhill High School, I offered parents to sign up online using my Google Calendar. Many parents took advantage of this offer. During the conferences, I offered parents the option to sign up for text message alerts from me for their child’s major test scores. Several parents signed up for that as well. Many of us subscribe to various text message services, such as weather updates and sports scores. We use texting to stay connected with our social circles; then why not use it to stay in touch with the stakeholders of our students' education? Why not integrate text messaging for communicating with the community in which we teach? There are several options on the web that could handle mass communication via SMS messaging. For example, look at Twitter, Mobilizeus, School Messenger, and Broadtexter. Twitter http://www.twitter.com and Broadtexter http://www.broadtexter.com are free. With these free services, you can:
  • Allow those in your community to subscribe to your alerts
  • Create a signup widget for your webpage or blog
  • Schedule text alerts in advance
  • Send alerts from a computer or mobile device

Note: Standard text messaging rates apply.

Monday, November 28, 2011

Chasing the 21st Century

Does school look and feel exactly how it did 10, 15, 20, or 30 years ago? Consider these practices:
(1) Desks organized in rows in front of the blackboard or overhead projector (not exactly multimedia of today!). (2) Teacher at the blackboard lecturing to the class or students working on handouts. Handouts... yup, they are photocopies of pages from resource books that came as part of the textbook purchase plan (maybe back in 1983, yikes!). Sometimes, the handouts are photocopies or printouts of material from various educational websites; printed minutes before the class begins. (3) Teachers showing YouTube videos or websites on a projector--- though using multimedia teachnology, may not be pedagogy based multimedia education.Will we continue like this for another 10, 15, 20, or 30 years? For the entire 21st century? Or will the schools look and feel different? Some schools will lead in the 21st century and others will chase it. Check out this link to read about 21 things that will be obsolete by 2020. Feel free to post your comments.