Education is a constantly changing occupation. Thanks to some choices of my own, choices by my district, policies from the state, and two grants that I've been awarded (one from my technology department at Mason City School District and one form Exeter Academy in NH) this year is no different. Except it seems that the next year will be a first for more than the usual amount.
Here are several examples: I will be integrating 15 Chromebooks and a new BYO device policy. Students will be integrating two new email addresses (one given by the school-Microsoft and one that will be a policy in my class -Google). I will be attending two conferences over the summer to integrate the "Harkness Method" better than I have been over the past two years. My school district will switch from desktop Microsoft Office to Office365 (in addition to temporarily changing from a desktop client of Outlook to a browser based webmail). Our district will also be changing from a trimester schedule to a semester based one and at the high school we will be changing from a five bell to a seven bell schedule. We will introducing Student Learning Objectives in our classrooms as a district initiative to assess our students use of vocabulary in each of our subjects. And finally (at least from what I can recall at this point) Common Core will be in full swing this year followed up by the PARCC assessment.
I hope to use this blog to capture this year's many changes.
